Chapter 7: 79. Unity

Grand Magus Do Hye eyed Yoshika eagerly as he spoke.

“The domain, Miss Yoshika, is one of the most intriguing aspects of cultivation. Whether one gathers mana in the mind, body, or soul, all cultivators who reach the xiantian levels eventually develop one. It is the one aspect which remains the same, regardless of discipline. Indeed, the existence of the domain across all three disciplines was the basis for my original theory of unified cultivation! Now, you exist as living proof of my hypothesis.”

Yoshika nodded along. She had been wondering about that herself. It seemed odd to her that there weren’t more interdisciplinary cultivators before now. If she could see that common link between them, why did it take a genius like Do Hye to come up with such a theory?

“One thing I did not predict was the early development of the domain in omnidisciplinary cultivators. However, I do suspect that I can explain it. Tell me, have you heard of fiends?”

Yoshika’s eyes widened in surprise. She had heard the word before, but only from Jianmo. She had inferred that it likely had something to do with magical beasts, but hadn’t been able to find any mention of them in the archives.

“They were mentioned off-hand by that demon we encountered, but we haven’t heard anything about them.”

“Oh, they are a fascinating race! They are descended from magical beasts—likely in a way that parallels our own spiritual ancestry, though that’s conjecture on my part. I had the pleasure of meeting quite a few of their tribes on my journeys overseas.”

Yoshika leaned forward with interest.

“You’ve been off the continent before?”

“Oho, yes indeed! In the arrogance of my youth, I thought I might have been descended from dragon spirits, so I left on a journey to find them. Imagine my surprise when it turned out that dragons aren’t spirits at all! Hahaha! The disillusionment was exquisite!”

Magus Hwang rolled his eyes and remarked flatly.

“Oh yes. Do Hye was quite arrogant in his youth. Completely unlike now.”

Yoshika politely refrained from comment while Do Hye simply ignored Hwang’s interjection.

“It was from them that I learned about the nature of fiends, and from those lessons I am able to derive a reasonable hypothesis about your early domain! A magical beast is an animal that has formed a mana stone—a beast core—within their body. The core cultivates the mana around them naturally, and converts any spiritual energy they consume into ki that empowers their body. However, what do you suppose happens when they accumulate enough to reach the xiantian stages, hmm?”

Yoshika wasn’t really sure. She’d heard that early martial artists had attempted to find ways to break through to the xiantian stages by observing magical beasts, but had given up in the end for reasons not documented in any of the materials she’d read.

“A xiantian tier magical beast undergoes a metamorphosis. Their body transforms, no longer resembling whatever animal they once were. Furthermore, they cease to be mindless beasts, and gain intelligence. Some even develop the ability to take human form! In short, they become fiends.”

“So fiends are just xiantian level magical beasts?”

“Not exactly! Among fiends, they call such individuals ‘awakened’, as opposed to naturally born fiends. A child born to the dragon tribe will be born a dragon, already a fiend with both a mana core and intelligence. In fact, most fiends take exception to the classification of awakened beasts as fiends.”

Yoshika frowned, she supposed she could relate to that, a bit. She didn’t like being associated with beasts either. Still it seemed unfair to dismiss an entire class of people just because of their origins.

“What does this have to do with domains or unified cultivation?”

“I’m getting to that, Miss Yoshika! Why is it that when magical beasts awaken, they become fiends? By what quality is a fiend able to give birth to a newborn fiend, rather than simply a beast? I posit this as an answer—the soul. I believe that magical beasts reach the xiantian level by cultivating a soul for themselves. Natural born fiends inherit their souls from their parents, as humans do.”

“Wait, what?”

Yoshika was so surprised by the casual revelation that she accidentally spoke in chorus again. Do Hye laughed.

“I don’t really need to explain that, do I? Our own race is already proof enough that a human child is born with a soul inherited from its parents. This is made very clear by the inheritance of spiritual traits in half-spirits.”

“But, we thought there was no way to predict which traits a half spirit child would express.”

“Among commoners, that’s quite true. Centuries of interbreeding has caused most of the Goryeon population to have dozens or even hundreds of spiritual ancestors. While we only express the traits of one, we still carry fragments of the others within our souls.”

Fragments. That was how Lee Jia’s spirit-half had described itself. A fragment of something greater. She wondered if that was a coincidence, but she was starting to agree with Magus Hwang that there were no coincidences.

“So you’re saying that a core eventually cultivates a soul, but I still don’t see how the domain plays into it.”

“I believe something similar occurs in immortal practitioners. Of course, we are born with our souls intact, but I believe there is some fundamental step that each discipline requires in order to reach the xiantian level—they must all bridge the gaps between body, mind, and soul. That bridge is the domain.”

Yoshika blinked a few times, trying to process that.

“Wouldn’t that make us xiantian level? We bridged that gap while we were still in the first stage.”

Both mages scoffed. Magus Hwang was the one to answer her question.

“It’s not the only requirement. Just the most important one. The ability to manipulate divine energy to construct an immortal vessel is also required.”

“Immortal vessel?”

Magus Hwang nodded sagely.

“As I have said before, it’s not just a title. We call cultivators ‘immortal practitioners’ for a variety of reasons. Longevity, resilience, but most importantly—a xiantian cultivator is capable of gaining an unlimited lifespan. They achieve this by preserving their consciousness with spiritual energy. The vessel used differs between the disciplines.”

Do Hye took over smoothly as Magus Hwang finished speaking, and Yoshika thought that it was almost as if they’d practiced this speech together.

“A spiritual cultivator forms a specialized core from their own qi, slowly refines it into divine energy, and then ‘sculpts’ it into a spiritual body. That body is their vessel—essentially a soul within their soul. They boast that even if their body were to be annihilated down to the meridians, the spiritual body would live on—indeed, it is their goal to do so, as the God-Emperor did before them.”

Yoshika nodded. She’d heard all of that before.

“What about mages and martial artists?”

Do Hye gave her a pleased grin as he answered.

“For mages, we imprint our consciousness within our auras. Hwang and I are rather decrepit old farts, maintaining our bodies entirely through mana. I believe he’s mentioned to you before that we are incapable of body cultivation because of this—we essentially don’t have physical bodies. We make mana constructs in our own image for our minds to inhabit. Really, at the highest levels, a xiantian mage is more like an elemental than a human.”

Yoshika’s eyes widened as that sparked another memory. Jianmo had said that their cultivation resembled a combination of humans, fiends, and elementals. She furrowed her brows and asked a question in Eui’s voice.

“What happens if your body dies?”

Both mages laughed.

“Ohoho! What a bold question! Well, not much—or rather it’s exceedingly difficult to kill a high level xiantian cultivator with physical damage precisely because of our immortality. If my body is destroyed, I can simply construct another. My soul is another story—this is what makes the spiritual cultivators’ boast so impressive. Most wouldn’t be able to recover from destroyed meridians.”

Yoshika carefully memorized everything they said. She had a feeling that a deep understanding of the methods cultivators use to stay alive would be extremely important, though something caught her attention as she considered it.

“Um, last month when we were attacked, Jia uh...died. A little bit. There was no soul in her body—no meridians. How did she survive that?”

The mages paused, dumbfounded for a moment before Do Hye scratched his chin thoughtfully and responded.

“You tell us, Miss Yoshika. Describe the event as it happened, from your perspective.”

She did, and the mages listened attentively, nodding along and occasionally asking clarifying questions. When her story was finished, Do Hye offered a theory.

“Hmm, I believe that what you experienced was not the destruction of Miss Lee’s meridians, but rather the translocation of them. Her soul—including the meridians—was moved temporarily to Miss An’s body, and likely suffered from severe degradation as a result, hence the damage she suffered when her soul was replaced. All of this would have been facilitated by the unique properties of a demonic core.”

Magus Hwang rubbed his chin in thought.

“I agree with that hypothesis, but I’m more interested in your interaction with Miss Lee’s spirit half within this ‘soulscape’ you described. I’ve heard of half-spirits learning to become more in tune with their spiritual ancestry, but I’ve never heard anyone describe it as a distinct entity like that.”

Yoshika shrugged.

“It didn’t seem to think it was a distinct entity. It kept insisting that it was just a fragment of us—or, at least Jia—as well as something bigger.”

Do Hye’s eyes were practically shining.

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“Fascinating! Perhaps a subconscious mana construct? Or some kind of spiritual manifestation given strength by your spiritual cultivation?”

Yoshika shook her heads in exasperation. Mages.

“It doesn’t really matter—we’re getting really far off-track. We were supposed to be talking about domains!”

Do Hye chuckled ruefully.

“Ah yes! Haha, well let’s return to that, then. Though I suspect that your soulscape will be an important part of the puzzle, eventually.”

Magus Hwang nodded in agreement.

“Oh, and incidentally, nobody knows how a martial artist would achieve true immortality. None had ever reached xiantian before Ienaga Yumi, and she is still recently broken through—at least by xiantian standards.”

Do Hye laughed.

“Hah! Quite so! Well, I’m sure the young lady will figure it out in a millennium or so. In the meantime, your domain! I suspect your early development of it is partially a result of your unified cultivation, but there’s more to it than simply bridging the gaps between body, mind, and soul. The domain is the expression of your path, it’s who you are as a cultivator. You wouldn’t have been able to develop it at all without at least some kind of idea of what it meant to you—even if only subconsciously. Let’s take a look, eh?”

Yoshika felt the Grand Magus’ domain pressing in on hers, similar to the effects of suppression she’d felt in the past, but it didn’t restrict her. Instead, it gave her an intense feeling of being watched or scrutinized. As if every part of her was being carefully and systematically analyzed. Both bodies shuddered at the sensation.

Magus Hwang smiled sympathetically at her.

“It’s intrusive, isn’t it? The Snake’s specialty—aura reading, taken to its logical extreme. Anyone can get a basic impression of another’s domain, if it isn’t being hidden and they have the ability to sense it. Do Hye takes it a step further—he can get a perfect read on someone’s domain, and even use it to predict their thoughts and actions. It’s unsettling.”

Do Hye chuckled as his domain withdrew.

“It’s only intrusive if I actively analyze someone like this. I can read simple activities more passively, which is how I was able to tell you were speaking telepathically before. You’ve got one of the more interesting domains I’ve ever read, Miss Yoshika—particularly exceptional in that it is indeed one domain.”

Yoshika tilted her heads curiously.

“We could have told you that. Our domains combined even when we’re not in this state, as long as we’re close enough together. Well—touching, ever since Elder Qin sealed them.”

Do Hye shook his head.

“No, you misunderstand. You do not have two domains in one—you have one domain between the two of you. I can see the seal Qin Zhao placed on you clearly—it wouldn’t be able to suppress two distinct domains.”

“Wait, but that doesn’t make any sense—when Jia and Eui are separate, we still have our domains. How can that be possible? Wouldn’t the seal only work on one of us?”

“Ah, well rather than each of you having a domain it’s more like you each have half a domain while separate. I suspect this may be directly linked to the cultivation bottleneck you’ve reported. The seal—hmm, actually I shouldn’t say too much about that, Qin Zhao would be annoyed with me.”

Yoshika focused both pairs of eyes intently on Do Hye. Solving that cultivation bottleneck had been something that eluded her for months now, and neither Jia nor Eui had made any progress on breaking the seal either.

“How? We’ve been trying to figure that out for ages and nothing has worked. Our best guess has been that Jia is holding us back because of, uh, personal difficulties. She’s not very good at introspection for reasons that are a bit too personal to discuss here.”

Do Hye nodded in understanding.

“Personal trauma is certainly something that can be a challenge for cultivators of all disciplines—usually addressed long before the complications of defining one’s path and establishing a domain. However, that’s only part of the puzzle! How can I describe this? Hmm, it’s like building a house—you have a solid foundation, but you’re each trying to build an entire house on the same foundation. You need to work together to build one house instead, understand?”

Yoshika considered the Grand Magus’ words carefully. The analogy made sense to her, but she wasn’t really sure how to apply that to her practice. It was a start, at least, but it felt like she’d been experiencing a lot of ‘starts’ recently. It felt as if she was taking one step back for every two strides forward.

“We think we understand. At the very least, we think it might help to change the way we think about our development.”

“Every aspect of it! When you cultivate it must not be as Miss An and Miss Lee, but as Miss Yoshika! That is the path you walk—one of unity! It’s quite interesting, and no doubt a very challenging path.”

“What about things like Jia’s familiar, or the shadow element that she’s integrated into her domain?”

Do Hye sighed and shook his head, wagging a finger in admonishment.

“Not Miss Lee’s—your familiar, the shadow element that you have integrated into your domain. Even when you are apart, both have intrinsically become a part of who you are.”

“But Eui can’t control the shadow element, and Heian lives in Jia’s soulscape. Eui can’t even touch her.”

Do Hye stroked his chin thoughtfully.

“Have you tried? Miss An might not have trained her meridians the way Miss Lee has, but she should be perfectly capable of borrowing any of the refined mana in your domain. As for the spirit familiar—-well, it’s a bit of an unusual case. Rather than being bound by some contract or vessel, it seems to have directly become part of your domain. It may ‘reside’ within Miss Lee’s soul, but it is still just as much a part of Miss An.”

Curiously, Yoshika tried summoning Heian from within Jia’s soul. It materialized out of thin air, directly into Eui’s free arm. Heian looked around at the room with curiosity shining in her bright blue eyes, before blinking up at Eui and nuzzling into her chest, purring gently.

Magus Hwang smiled gently at the display.

“Well, it seems like at least some of the Grand Magus’ baseless conjecture is accurate. Regarding the difficulty you described with past trauma—I won’t delve into details, but why was it that you singled out Miss Lee, specifically?”

Yoshika considered the question as she scratched Heian’s head.

“We can say with confidence that Eui is more at peace with who she is and how she got there than Jia is. That’s a consensus that comes from both of us. Jia has struggled with it, privately, but many of those issues remain unresolved.”

Magus Hwang listened attentively, then furrowed his brows.

“Privately? It was my understanding that you could access the memories of both girls, and that each of them would remember this exactly as you’ve experienced it, is that correct?”

Yoshika nodded Jia’s head, using her body to carry on the conversation while she used Eui’s to play with Heian.

“Yes, that’s true. In order to respect our privacy, we try not to think too deeply about our past or feelings in this state. There’s still some bleedthrough sometimes, but it’s worked well enough, so far.”

Both mages looked at her, aghast, and Yoshika paused nervously.

“W-what? Did we say something strange?”

Do Hye shook his head and exchanged a grim look with Magus Hwang.

“Girls, Miss Yoshika, you haven’t really thought this through, have you?”

Yoshika glanced between the mages in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

Magus Hwang leaned forward as he spoke.

“It’s no wonder your cultivation has been so halted. Never mind what Do Hye just told you—well, no, you should still mind it, but this is of greater importance. The path you two have chosen to walk is not one that affords you privacy—not from each other. You already share a domain—something more intimate to a cultivator than anything else. Pushed to its most extreme, your path...well, perhaps the Grand Magus can put it more succinctly than I, since he saw it for himself.”

Yoshika was starting to get very nervous. If Hwang Sung was deferring to Do Hye’s advice, it had to be serious. Do Hye shot Magus Hwang an irritated look, but nodded.

“Miss Yoshika, I believe that at the end of your path, you will not be two girls with linked abilities, but rather a single entity capable of splitting herself into parallel wills. Your current state could be considered to be a nascent version of the form you are destined to take.”

Yoshika felt the sweat forming on the back of Jia’s neck. That was—her mind began to swim as her thoughts and emotions began to war with each other. Jia and Eui were not of one mind on this and it was—she blinked.

After a moment of disorientation, Jia met Eui’s eyes and saw the concern behind them. Heian seemed to sense something was amiss and glanced up from Eui’s arm, meowing softly. Jia sighed and turned back to the mages.

“Uh...I—I think that Eui and I are going to need some time to process that.”

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