Chapter 99: 168. Divinity

Jia stared at Jianmo in confusion.

“Wait, back up—I feel like we’ve skipped a step somewhere? Sacred Arts? Isn’t that a xiantian thing? Only xiantian cultivators can control divine essence.”

Jianmo scoffed.

“Pfft, who told you that? Use your head, little kitty—you’ve already done it! Back when you two first broke through. It’s half the reason I was so interested in you two.”

Jia frowned. When they had first broken through? In that cave where they had first discovered Jianmo, when Yoshika had been born. He—she’d been male at the time—had suppressed them with some kind of technique that left behind a fragment of his essence. If they hadn’t unified their cultivation and formed a domain, it would have killed them.

“That was different! It just broke down into mana and then we absorbed it.”

“Did it break down, or did you break it down? It was a foreign essence in your domain, your space, it had become a part of you. And rather than just let it go, you insisted on absorbing it. I don’t hate that greedy nature of yours.”

Ja Yun looked between Jianmo and Lee Jia with utter confusion on her face. She leaned in towards Eui and whispered.

“What are we even talking about right now? I’m so lost.”

Eui chuckled darkly.

“Jianmo here is implying that Jia and I can somehow just break all the rules and create divine essence like xiantian cultivators without breaking through first.”

Jianmo wagged her finger again, shaking her head.

“Ah, ah, not quite! Hmm, actually that explains your weird perspective—I suppose it makes sense in context. You’re right that only a true immortal can create divine essence, but for you, manipulating it should be well within the realm of possibility. What did Qin’s brat say again? ‘You’re a half-step into the xiantian realm’? Well, why stop there? Why not three quarters? Nine tenths?”

Ja Yun scratched her cheek, rapidly losing her fear of Jianmo as she got caught up in the conversation.

“Well, I assume that by ‘divine essence’ you’re talking about divine energy. It’s a greater, more refined form of mana that can only be created by intense cultivation by mages or other cultivators in the fourth stage or higher. Effectively there’s no difference between creating and manipulating it—it doesn’t exist unless someone creates it.”

All eyes fell on Ja Yun, and she shrank back a little bit. The way she acted, it was sometimes too easy to forget that she was an accomplished mage—she would have to have a pretty strong interest in magic and cultivation to have gotten as far as she had. Jianmo giggled.

“Well, not too bad. I’ll give it forty-six points. Alright, my little disciple and her harem of kittens, class is in session. Who can tell me what the twitchy little lion got wrong?”

Jia rolled her eyes. It was just like Jianmo to jump around between teaching styles like this.

“She forgot about the Sovereign’s Tear—or probably just didn’t believe you. All of the mana in the world comes from it leaking divine essence, right?”

Jianmo snapped her fingers loudly, causing Ja Yun to jump.

“Eighty-three points! The tear doesn’t ‘leak’ anything. My master probably knew that those petty gods would try to destroy his legacy and arranged to make sure it would sustain itself and the world he hid it in. Otherwise, you’re correct. In other mortal realms, it’s possible to draw on scraps of divine essence directly if you know where to look for it, but here you’d probably have to be right in my master’s tomb to access any without creating it yourself like the cowardly lion over there said.”

Ja Yun grumbled under her breath that she had a name, but Jianmo ignored her. Jia shook her head.

“Okay, fine, that still doesn’t explain how we’re supposed to learn it, what good it will do us, or how that at all ties into our problem with Heian.”

Jianmo scoffed.

“Zero points. Your little kitty spirit is the entire crux of it all. Spirits can naturally handle divine essence, it’s part of their nature as nascent gods.”

Ja Yun choked, but Jia and Eui were long used to Jianmo casually dropping revelations like that. Eui sighed.

“So we, what, teach Heian to make divine essence—without knowing how ourselves—then use what she creates to form our own sacred arts? Sounds like a lot of trouble.”

“You say that now, but you’ll be singing a different tune when you’re fighting for your life in a divine essence rich environment like my master’s tomb. Besides, it’s about the only way my former neighbor survives her awakening.”

Jia was about to ask for clarification, but Ja Yun rallied herself and interrupted again.

“Wait, wait—are we just not going to address that ‘nascent gods’ thing? What was that about?”

Jianmo chuckled.

“Did I not say? Humans and dragons are the most powerful factions in the divine realm, but that’s because the lazy little shits almost never have their own mortal worlds to worry about. The vast majority of deities are former spirits. Apotheosis is practically baked into their life cycle. In a way, they are the only natural gods there are. The rest are pretenders, defying the will of the heavens.”

Eui crossed her arms and glared at Jianmo, unimpressed.

“You’re a former spirit, and you’re clearly not a god.”

Jianmo just shrugged and smiled mysteriously.

“Not yet, no. I haven’t exactly been in a rush since gaining human form.”

Jia felt like there was definitely more to it than that, but she tried to steer the conversation back on track.

“Alright fine, there’s no point in arguing about it. If you think that’s what we should be working on next, then we’ll do it. But how are we supposed to learn it? I doubt it’s something we can just casually meditate on.”

Jianmo nodded.

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“Quite right. For this next part, I’m going to need to talk to both of you.”

Ja Yun’s face scrunched up in confusion, but Jia knew what she meant. By unspoken agreement, Jia and Eui exchanged a quick glance before allowing their minds to blend together into Yoshika. Both sets of eyes settled on Jianmo as she spoke in chorus.

“We’re listening.”

Ja Yun’s ears twitched, and her mouth fell open in shock.

“Wait, what? What is this? What’s happening right now?”

Jianmo grinned.

“Hello Yoshika, have you not properly introduced yourself to your new friend? How careless.”

Yoshika sighed and shook her heads.

“Sorry, Ja Yun, we’ll explain later.”

To her surprise, Ja Yun’s look changed to one of understanding rather than the confusion Yoshika had anticipated.

“Oh, ancestors, you two are sharing minds aren’t you? I’ve heard of first year students getting their wires crossed during awakening, but I didn’t know you could do that on purpose. That’s so cool!”

Yoshika blushed a bit at the praise. Ja Yun’s instant understanding and acceptance was surprisingly gratifying. Jianmo rolled her eyes and summoned a tiny mote of essence that glowed impossibly bright to Yoshika’s metaphysical senses, but was otherwise completely invisible.

“Flirt later, kids, we’re on a clock and I’ve wasted too much time messing around already. Yoshika, can you sense this?”

Jianmo’s words brought Yoshika back into focus, and she nodded.

“We can. That’s divine essence, right?”

“Right you are. You’ll probably have a hard time even sensing it when you’re split up, but like this it should be easy, right?”

Yoshika nodded.

“It’s kind of hard to miss.”

“Right, well, now I want you to try to take control of it. Do not attempt to absorb or cultivate it. The worst case is that you just die, and the best case is that you trigger an early breakthrough—which you will fail horribly—followed by a tribulation, which will kill you.”

“Okay...thanks for the warning.”

Closing her eyes to focus, Yoshika concentrated her domain on the mote of essence, but after a few minutes of effort, she ran into a problem.

“We can surround it with our domain, but it resists our influence. We don’t know how we’re supposed to control it without making it part of our domain first—which would be cultivating it, right?”

Jianmo inclined her head.

“Sort of. It’s not the sort of thing you’re going to learn in an afternoon. For now, just try to move it. You don’t need to do anything special.”

Yoshika scrunched up her faces in concentration, surrounding the mote with her domain. She tried to use her domain as a sort of net to grasp at the divine essence and pull at it. It didn’t cause much more than a tiny shudder, but Jianmo’s eyes lit up with a bright smile.

“Very nice! I knew I took you two in for a reason. Okay, I’m going to leave this with you, and your mission is going to be to try to get better at manipulating it. You still need to master as many techniques as you can get your hands on and get a xiantian tier destruction core—so don’t slack on that either.”

“Um...how are we supposed to take it with us if we can’t even move it? Didn’t you say that trying to absorb it will kill us?”

Jianmo stuck out her tongue.

“I also said that spirits are naturals at handling divine essence, didn’t I? Heian!”

At Jianmo’s call, Heian manifested in her cat form and stared up at the mote of divine essence with wide eyes. Jianmo bent down to address the spirit, speaking as if to a small child.

“Now listen carefully, honey. I need you to hang on to this for your moms, okay? It’s not for you! They need to learn how to use it so that they can protect you and teach you how to protect yourself. Can you be a good little girl and take care of this for me? I’ll make it up to you with a treat later!”

Heian nodded excitedly, and Jianmo held out a hand, the divine essence floating just above it. Before Yoshika could even react, Heian snapped up the mote of divine essence in her mouth and swallowed it—somehow, Yoshika understood that she hadn’t eaten it. She was just storing it in her stomach. Apparently there was a difference.

The atmosphere began to change, and Jia felt an odd oppressive feeling, as though she was being watched. Ja Yun shuddered, the fur on her ears and tail standing on end. Jianmo looked up at the sky and sighed.

“Well, I suppose that’s my time up. I don’t hate punctual old geezers. Take care, kids!”

Jianmo stretched, cracking the joints in her neck and fingers, before donning an extremely unfriendly looking smile and taking a step forward. As if there was an invisible doorway between them, Jianmo vanished into thin air, and the oppressive atmosphere vanished. The three girls stood in stunned silence for a moment at her sudden departure. Heian, failing utterly to read the mood, nuzzled up against Jia’s legs. That broke the spell and Ja Yun’s shout broke the silence.

“Okay, holy ancestors, what the fuck? What was that? I know I said I’d keep it a secret but please explain to me what—just all of that. Explain.”

Yoshika sighed. She liked Ja Yun, but they’d only just met, and she wasn’t eager to start sharing all of her deepest secrets with a complete stranger who’s entire job was to openly spy on her. Still, thanks to Jianmo, she didn’t have much of a choice, and it was better than leaving her with an incomplete picture and only reporting back to her superiors that Yoshika was consorting with demons.

“It’s a long story. Let’s head back to the caravan, and we’ll fill you in on the way.”