Chapter 113: 182. Magic

“Ancestors, Miss Jia, are you trying to start your own sect?”

Dae’s comment was directed at the crowded room full of people meditating, exercising, or studying. They’d had to move to a larger room than the quarters that Jia and Eui had been assigned to in the consulate, but a properly motivated Ja Yun had been able to argue that focusing on training would keep them all out of trouble. The military escort was more than happy to provide, as long as it kept Yoshika inside the consulate and away from trouble.

The space that they’d been provided was a wide open room, not unlike the dojo that they’d seen in Noguchi’s castle back in Yamato, furnished with mats, cushions, and some rudimentary training equipment. It was more than they’d expected, and quite impressive for a temporary accommodation arranged on such short notice.

The room was roughly split into three sections—in one quiet corner, Lee Narae and her mother sat in quiet meditation. They had been given the basics on unlocking their mana and qi, and both were working on it together. In truth, Lee Jung was mostly just there to support her daughter—it was probably impossible for her to unlock her qi without external support, and her aura was so thin that awakening her mana was not very likely either. Nevertheless, she took in the lessons attentively and sat in solidarity with little Narae—who was focusing on unlocking her qi first, on Jia’s instruction. Narae was still young enough that her meridians could be opened unaided by the likes of an awakening stone—something that Jia would rather not use on anybody if she could help it.

In another corner, Heian was hard at work with Hattori Koji, the old priest from Yamato, working on her talismans. Heian turned out to be quite creative with her magic, forming unique talismans out of concepts that Jia could barely comprehend. They still hadn’t quite worked out how to get Heian to cast spells like Hattori’s shikigami did, without manifesting herself, but according to the old Onmyouji her progress with magic was remarkably fast. Jia had to remind him—and herself—that despite her appearances, Heian wasn’t a child, and had the wisdom of an ancient spirit tucked away inside her head. Even if most of that spirit was currently residing in a flower, safely preserved in Jia’s dimensional ring.

While Heian was manifested, she also made a point of keeping the tiny little mote of divine essence that Jianmo had left with them out for Yoshika to ‘play with.’ Neither Jia nor Eui had made any progress trying to influence the thing, and even while merged together as Yoshika, it proved to be an extremely vexing puzzle. They couldn’t manipulate it without integrating it into themselves, and according to Jianmo, trying to cultivate it would likely prematurely trigger their ascension to xiantian—something that they were not likely to survive.

Finally, the majority of the room was dedicated to physical practice—mostly by necessity, as it was the most kinetic of the disciplines. At that moment, Ja Yun was putting herself through a hellish physical training regimen, overseen by Takeda Rika—who was just as harsh an instructor as Eui, if not more so. Despite the sweat pouring off of her, and the exhaustion written plainly across Ja Yun’s face, she seemed to be enjoying herself as much as Jia had seen since meeting her.

That was how Dae found them, on his first visit to the consulate since the night of the raid on Seung’s hideout. Hayakawa wasn’t present, having been busy making arrangements for the upcoming trip to the capital, Songdo. Privately, Jia thought that Hayakawa was avoiding them, but she kept those thoughts to herself. Whatever issues Hayakawa Kaede was dealing with—they were her own. Jia wouldn’t bother her about it unprompted.

Jia returned her thoughts to the present and shrugged at Dae’s comment.

“It’s not like we’ve got anything better to do than train while we’re stuck here. It’s like being under house arrest all over again. I don’t want to cause Hayakawa any more trouble, though, so we’re playing nice for now.”

Dae chuckled awkwardly, scratching the back of his head as he cast his gaze around the room.

“Fair enough, I suppose. Though it seems to me that you’re doing a lot more teaching than training yourselves.”

Eui glanced at him and shrugged.

“I mean, I guess? There’s not a whole lot for us to work on here. We’ve pretty much mastered most of our techniques, and it’s not like we can find more while stuck in this building.”

Dae nodded in understanding.

“Naturally. Well, perhaps I can be of some assistance?”

Jia looked askance at Dae.

“That can’t be the reason you came here, can it? I assumed you had some specific business.”

Dae blinked at her in genuine confusion.

“No? Do I need a reason to come visit an old friend? You’re only going to be here for a few more days, and unfortunately I won’t be able to join you. We will perhaps meet again while you are in the capital, depending on how quickly my own business brings me back there, but I’m afraid we’ll be parting ways again rather soon. I just thought—well, I suppose I wanted to make the most of it?”

Eui rolled her eyes.

“Still got it for Jia? I thought you and that Harada guy had something going on.”

Dae coughed, going a bit red in the face.

“I assure you that I have no such designs. Jun and I—well, we tried it for a bit, but we both decided that it would be best if we simply remained as friends. Anyhow, I have in fact brought some of my research material with me—copies that you can keep if you like. I noticed Miss Jia’s interest in my warding formation before, so I thought perhaps we could go over the theories behind it.”

Jia giggled and shook her head.

“You wanted to make the most of the chance to visit us as friends, and the first thing you came up with was studying magical theory together?”

Dae gave her the same blinking look of incomprehension.

“Yes? What else?”

Jia couldn’t help but smile, it was such a Dae answer. And she was falling behind in her magical studies—Do Hye’s barrier design was the only thing she had to research, and it had been stumping her for years.

“Sure, why not? Maybe you can help Heian out with her weird spells too.”

Dae’s ears perked up, and his tail began to wag excitedly.

“Heian? Your spirit familiar? Oh that sounds fascinating, I’d love to see how a spirit handles magic!”

Eui jabbed Dae in the side with her fingers, frowning.

“Daughter.”

Dae rubbed at his side painfully, casting a confused glance back at Jia, who offered clarification.

“Heian is our daughter, not our familiar. Aside from the fact that it’s better for her development to have more ‘human’ connections like that, she really is family, not a tool.”

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Dae nodded.

“Ah, of course. My apologies for the misunderstanding.”

 

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Studying magic with Dae made Jia as nostalgic for the academy as she had ever been since leaving it. She had missed him—the way his face lit up when talking about abstract magical concepts, or putting together theories about advanced spell forms, the way his infectious enthusiasm could turn even the most terminally boring subject into something fascinating, and the genuine and insightful way he would engage with any question, no matter how rudimentary. Dae was a good friend, and an even better mage, and it pained Jia to know that she’d have to part ways with him again so soon.

Yet, in spite of those feelings, now that they’d been reunited Jia was able to come to terms with something that she’d struggled with for years. She was now certain, without a doubt, that she did not return Dae’s feelings for her. He was as important a friend to her as Rika or Eunae, and there was precious little she wouldn’t do to help him if he needed it, but it was nothing like the way she felt about Eui.

Maybe she had felt that way about him at one point, but whatever spark might have existed was completely gone. To her great relief, the same seemed to be true of Dae. He was still easily flustered by Eui’s jabs, but Jia didn’t sense the same awkward tension with him that she remembered from before. Likewise, Eui’s teasing wasn’t born of jealousy—she was just like that. Jia was glad that the three of them could study together without any of the tension that once existed between them. Especially since it was so productive.

“Ah, I see what your problem is—this part isn’t anchored in physical space at all. My master loved that trick. Apparently four-dimensional formation matrices are the only way to get the grand shield formations to deter spirits.”

Jia groaned as Dae quickly unraveled yet another piece of the puzzle that had been frustrating her for years—the barrier formation that Do Hye had used to contain the collateral damage of a heavenly tribulation.

“Four dimensions?! How does that even—wait, spirits? Oh! It extends into the spirit world! That makes so much sense!”

“You’re referring to your Steps of the Stalker technique? You said Jianmo called it ‘spirit-walking.’ That’s an interesting hypothesis, I wonder if we might be able to test it somehow...”

Dae stroked his chin thoughtfully, and Eui glanced sidelong at him.

“Depends, do you know how to actually draw a four dimensional formation? I kind of get using nested formations in order to create three-dimensional mana structures in the air, but pushing it into the spirit realm sounds kind of impossible.”

“Formation array, not ‘nested formation.’ And while the few four-dimensional structures I know are by rote, I do know how to inscribe them—they are the basis of the barriers and wards that I’ve used in the past to block and fool your domain.”

Jia’s ears perked up.

“You mean like that emptiness ward at your base?”

Dae nodded excitedly.

“Exactly, yes! Good name for it, too. It does indeed emit the conceptual impression of ‘emptiness.’”

“Then all we’d need to do is look at it from the spirit world—although that technique uses a lot of essence, so maybe we shouldn’t use it so frivolously.”

Jia and Dae both frowned as they puzzled over the problem, but Eui just rolled her eyes dismissively.

“I think you two are forgetting about something. Heian is a spirit, remember? Maybe she can just look at it herself and tell us. She doesn’t talk much, but she can talk.”

The three of them looked over at little Heian, who was at the same table with them in human form, focusing intently on her own work. Hattori had politely excused himself to meditate once they’d joined the table, but Heian had already been hard at work on some kind of intricately inscribed spell on a piece of oversized talisman paper. Over the course of their conversation, she’d since begun precisely folding it as she continued to cover seemingly every last millimeter of the paper with dense, flowing script. Dae did a double-take when he saw what she was doing.

“M—Miss Jia, has she been listening to us this entire time?”

Jia shrugged, admiring the cute little expression of concentration on her daughter’s face, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth as she drew the unusually complicated talisman.

“Probably. She’s a lot smarter than you might think from the child-like way she behaves. Why?”

“Well, I have no idea how to interpret that script she’s using, but by structure alone there’s no question that the talisman she is drawing is at least a three dimensional spell matrix. See the way she’s folding it like that? Why hasn’t anyone else thought of that?”

Jia glanced back at Hattori, quietly meditating in the corner with a small smirk on his face. Someone else had thought of that.

“What does that mean?”

Dae scratched his head.

“I—I don’t know! It opens up an entire new dimension of possibilities—literally! It’s practically an entire new field of magic all by itself. I can’t even start to make guesses without more research. Ahh, most of my reference materials are back at the palace! If only I had—”

“Mommy look!”

Jia and Eui—and Lee Jung, from across the room—all turned to look at Heian, proudly holding up her finished work. A neatly folded origami tiger, covered in a dense, flowing script that seemed as if it was all drawn from a single extremely delicate brushstroke. Before Jia could ask Heian what it did, Jia could feel Heian start to channel herself through it. The talisman glowed with a strange energy that absorbed the light at its edges, and Jia watched on with wonder as that paradoxical dark light resolved itself into the form of a ‘kitten’ the size of a large cat.

With fur as dark as night, and piercing blue eyes, Heian’s cat form stared up at Jia, blinked twice, then curled up around Heian’s leg and went to sleep. Eui frowned down at the display, looking from Heian’s cat form to Heian’s happily beaming face, then to Jia, who shared her confusion.

“Jia, did we just become grandparents?”