Fates Parallel Chapter 65 - Exploration

Minami Yuuko was sulking, and she wasn’t afraid to admit it—at least, to herself. Everything had fallen apart after Lee Jia somehow managed to single-handedly take down their entire back line. Yuuko didn’t understand it—Fujino was almost as good as her, and he would have had Ishihara and Fujikawa supporting him. Had Dae made Lee another one of those talismans that she used to take down Yan Zhihao? There was no way she could have done it by herself, that was for certain.

She wished she could have seen it, but she’d been kept busy by that stupid rat girl. An Eui had gotten much more aggressive once she realized that Yuuko no longer had the support of the layered mana shield to protect her, and Lee Jia had been quick to rush to the support of everyone except An at the end of the fight.

What was with that? Everyone on the team got to fight Lee Jia except for Yuuko. What bullshit! It was obvious that Lee Jia had recognized Yuuko as the best fighter and had intentionally avoided her. It was all starting to make sense—Lee Jia just hid behind more skilled fighters like An Eui and Dae. Next time, Yuuko wouldn’t let her hide—she’d get her one on one and show everybody who the better fighter was.

---

Lee Jia shuddered, she could practically feel Minami’s gaze burning a hole in her back. She didn’t know what she’d done to earn the girl’s enmity—it had been a good match, and Lee Jia doubted that she could consistently repeat the performance in a second bout. She felt like they had been very evenly matched, and looked forward to training with them more. At least the rest of the team was more friendly.

“Don’t worry about Minami, she’s just prideful. It was a good match!”

Fujino was consoling her as they went over the match together.

“Dae might have told you already, but our style was originally inspired by your duel with Yan Zhihao, but we’ve never quite been able to figure out working attack spells into our martial arts like that. You really caught me off guard with that sudden lightning bolt.”

Jia nodded in understanding, it had taken a lot of practice for her as well, and without her ability to quickly produce talismans to practice with, might have been completely impractical to train.

“It’s not easy unless you have a steady supply of talismans to practice with—I must have gone through hundreds during the week leading up to my duel with Yan.”

“Hundreds!? How did you even write so many?”

“I can probably show you later. What about that mana shield technique? I thought it was supposed to be ineffective against attacks with physical substance, even if you layered it like that.”

Fujino laughed and shook his head.

“I wish I could pretend it was some grand secret, but they are just regular mana shield talismans activated with force element ki. Dae taught us that spells could be activated with ki instead of mana, and that spell seems to respond particularly well to the force element.”

Lee Jia had never thought of trying that before, not that she had force element ki to begin with, but it would be an invaluable technique for Rika.

“Wow, where in the ancestors’ names have you guys been? We should train together more often!”

Before Fujino could respond, Hayakawa interrupted their conversation.

“I’m glad you think so, Miss Lee. Fujino’s group is as close to a fully omnidisciplinary technique as any aside from your own, and I was planning on having you assist them in developing their style.”

Fujino and Lee Jia both gave Hayakawa surprised looks.

“Lady Hayakawa! I was unaware that you had come to such an arrangement with Miss Lee.”

Hayakawa nodded, and gestured toward Lee Jia.

“Miss Lee here has agreed to assist you with your training, and even help your group awaken your qi in exchange for access to this training area. I wouldn’t have asked you to give up your invitations for no benefit, Fujino.”

Fujino bowed quickly.

“Of course not, Lady Hayakawa. I was simply surprised by the form that benefit took.”

Behind Hayakawa, Miyata Toshiharu scoffed.

“Be grateful you received any benefit at all, as dubious as the help of some youkai is—”

“Miyata!”

Hayakawa shot him a sharp glare, and Miyata silenced himself. Lee Jia shook her head ruefully—she didn’t envy Hayakawa having to deal with that on a regular basis. Hayakawa continued as if Miyata’s interjection had never happened.

“I won’t ask Miss Lee to spend this trip on it, as I am sure she and her team have other business to attend, but afterwards we’ll arrange for her to join your group for training on a regular basis.”

“We would be delighted to have her! I look forward to working with you more in the future, Miss Lee.”

Fujino bowed politely, and Lee Jia matched it as she responded.

“Likewise! It was nice meeting you all—uh, again, I mean. Nice meeting you again!”

Lee Jia blushed a bit as Fujino raised his eyebrow, but he politely ignored her error. She’d been so close to avoiding embarrassment, too. Fujino said his farewells and broke off to rejoin his own group, leaving Lee Jia along with Hayakawa—and her permanent shadow, Miyata.

“Well fought, Miss Lee. Do you plan on joining us for more training?”

“I don’t think so. As much as I would love to stick around for a bit, I think Dae is excited to explore the peak before the Qin group scours it clean of resources.”

“Very well. We’ll be camping here for a few days—you’re welcome to join us, or depart at your leisure, but we’ll be leaving on the third morning and I expect you to join us. I told Zheng Long the same thing.”

Lee Jia nodded.

“Alright! We’ll probably be back by nightfall, then.”

Miyata sneered at Lee Jia and shook his head.

“Try not to get yourselves killed while outside of Lady Hayakawa’s protection. It would reflect poorly on us.”

Hayakawa sighed, but didn’t add anything. Lee Jia smiled and nodded to her, assuming that she shared the sentiment, if not its reasoning.

After that exchange, Lee Jia returned to her own group, feeling a mixture of excitement and trepidation.

“Are you guys ready to go exploring?”

Dae perked up and nodded excitedly.

“Of course! I’ve been rather looking forward to this, actually, hehe!”

With a round of agreements from the rest of the group, Lee Jia and her friends set off to explore the mountain peak.

---

Yan Yue was miserable. She’d been miserable for weeks, and the prospect of spending the next few days camping in the mountains with a bunch of boys was not improving her mood. Maybe if they were better boys, but Han Yu was as insufferable as ever, and Zheng Long had found a kindred spirit in Xin Wei—their constant banter was obnoxious. Guan Yi seemed alright, at least. She appreciated his quiet stoicism, not to mention his impressive level of fitness—Qin men could be so neglectful of their bodies.

However, even Xin’s hopeless weakness to Guan Yi’s sarcastic interjections was little more than a thin silver lining on the dark cloud hanging over Yue. Things had been going poorly for her ever since her betrayal of Lee Jia and An Eui. In hindsight, she had probably overreacted because of a lack of sleep and her bodily exhaustion at the time. There had been better ways to handle that situation, but it was too late to fix it now.

Zheng Long laughed loudly at some inane quip or another Xin Wei had made, and Yue regarded him coldly. He was planning something, she was sure. He had accepted her excuses about Lee Jia’s association to Hayakawa far too readily, and even more telling was the fact that Han Yu hadn’t mocked her about her failure to control the situation. Han Yu probably knew something, but Yue wasn’t sure how to approach getting the information out of him.

“Is something bothering you, Miss Yan? Perhaps the proximity to the place of your brother’s death is disturbing you?”

Yan Yue looked up at Guan Yi with a start. She had been lost in thought, and the boy was surprisingly quiet for his size. She smiled weakly at him.

“Something like that. You were there, right? When he died?”

Guan Yi nodded slowly.

“It was an unfortunate circumstance. We had not anticipated encountering such a powerful elemental, and I believe your brother underestimated it because of his affinity for fire.”

Yan Yue sighed. Nothing new, there—they were consistent with their story, at least.

“I...heard a very strange rumor. That he wasn’t actually killed by the elemental, but something else. Knowing Lee Jia as I do now, I don’t think it could have been her but—well, I just can’t think of anything else.”

Guan Yi regarded her cooly, without changing his expression—he was entirely too good at that.

“I do not know where you heard such a thing, but I assure you that Miss Lee had no part in the death of your brother.”

“I notice that you did not affirm that he died at the hands of the elemental.”

There was a brief pause before Guan answered.

“I do not wish to lie to you, but I have sworn not to speak of it. I ask you to refrain from inquiring further.”

That was...surprisingly direct. She supposed it was rather typical of the Earth Rending Sword Sect, though. Perfect soldiers to a fault—she realized that there was something there that she could use. She put on an expression of concern and trepidation.

“If there was something else—some greater danger that caused my brother’s death—we wouldn’t be at risk of encountering it ourselves, here on the mountain, would we?”

Another pause.

“I do not think so, no. If such a danger existed, you can rest assured that it is long gone.”

Yan Yue smiled. So there was something else. She had been worried that Lee Jia really had fabricated the story about Jianmo, but now she was starting to believe. She let out a genuine sigh of relief.

“Good. I would hate to find something like that.”

She noticed Zheng Long glancing back at her with approval, evidently he had been listening to their conversation and appreciated the confirmation that they were not on a wild goose chase. He probably didn’t realize that she genuinely meant it when she said she hoped not to find their quarry.

---

Gathering alchemical materials turned out to be a lot more boring than Lee Jia expected. Other than watching her back for the Qin group and the occasional magical beast, there was very little for her to do other than watch Dae get excited over rocks and plants. Admittedly, that had its own appeal, since he’d get full-on tail-waggingly enthusiastic over the most innocuous little things. They’d been dutifully collecting all kinds of roots, berries, bits of bark, and even a few clumps of moss—not to mention an impressive collection of rock samples.

It surprised Lee Jia just how many different elements the mountain gathered. Most of the beasts and elementals had been some derivative of earth or stone, with the occasional magma creature like the obsidian wolves she had first encountered last winter. The plants and minerals were apparently another story entirely.

They’d found frozen berries that cultivated the ice element, bark from a tree struck by lightning, a mineral deposit that had somehow absorbed sky element essence, and a number of others besides. Far too much for them to collect everything, but Dae kept careful notes recording the locations of each item so that they could return later to gather resources another time.

Jia had been taking the opportunity to work on identifying different elements within her domain. It was one thing to tell that one element was different from another, but to simply know which element she was sensing by its quality alone was still a challenge for her. Luckily, she had Dae and Eunae here to correct her whenever she got things wrong.

“The essence gathering here is...gravity?”

Dae shook his head at her as he collected a few bits of unremarkable looking rock that radiated spiritual energy.

“Not quite, hehe. There is some yang element present, but not nearly enough to represent a qualitative shift from earth to gravity.”

“Oh...”

It was a work in progress, but she was learning. Once Dae was finished gathering the minerals he stood up and brushed himself off, looking up at the darkening sky.

“Do you think we should start heading back?”

Jia checked as well, seeing that the sun was getting quite low, and that there was probably less than an hour of daylight left. Dae was probably right about heading back, but Jia could sense a strong leyline within her domain that would likely lead to another site nearby.

“Let’s check out one more before we return, okay?”

There were no objections, and the group followed Jia’s lead towards the next location. The leyline led them to a steep cliff with a narrow ledge leading to a shady outcropping. Growing there was a single flowery bush covered in dusky petals.

Eui peered over the cliff at the sheer drop below them.

“Wow, Jia, you couldn’t have found a more auspicious flower bush if you tried. It’s hanging precariously over a deadly fall and everything.”

Dae crossed his arms and sighed.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s useful. It’s likely a rare plant, but if it hasn’t absorbed mana it’s mostly worthless to an immortal practitioner.”

That was true, so Jia focused on her domain in order to try to sense the mana around the bush, but it felt like something was blocking her somehow.

“That’s odd...can any of you sense the mana over there?”

Dae, Eunae and Eui all tried, while Rika just stood back and watched vigilantly for any beasts—her mana sense couldn’t match the rest of them.

Eunae and Dae shook their heads.

“It’s too far for me to sense anything.”

“Same here, hehe. That domain of yours really is quite impressive.”

Eui frowned, furrowing her brows in concentration.

“I don’t know if this is a range issue. It kinda feels as if the mana just disappears there.”

Jia nodded, that was how it felt to her as well.

“I’m going to try getting closer anyway. Maybe the plant is just absorbing so much essence that we can’t detect anything around it.”

Eui glanced at her with a nervous expression.

“Just be careful, Jia. I’m getting a weird feeling about this.”

“I will.”

Jia pressed herself up against the cliff face and edged her way slowly across the narrow ledge, watching carefully with her domain for any signs of danger. As she approached the outcropping, she realized that her theory about the flower bush absorbing all the essence was definitely not correct. Something was blocking her from sensing anything within the outcropping.

Once she crossed the threshold of whatever was blocking her domain and stepped onto the outcropping, everything changed. The mana here was absurdly dense—even more than the cave where they had encountered the fire elemental and Jianmo. It was so much that she could physically feel it. The air felt colder, and the outcropping seemed darker than it had from the outside.

Jia tried to identify the element of the mana that saturated the area, but her first guess couldn’t possibly have been correct. It felt almost exactly the same as the shadow element that she cultivated with her Steps of the Stalker technique, but that was the kind of element that didn’t usually appear naturally.

She moved to examine the flower bush, but froze when she suddenly felt an odd presence. She didn’t sense anything in her domain, yet she had an unshakable feeling that she was being watched, or perhaps hunted. Jia turned back to return to her friends—

And was met by an enormous pair of glowing golden eyes with vertically slit pupils—very similar to her own, albeit three times the size. They were attached to an equally huge black panther that seemed to blend seamlessly with the shadows around it.

A cold sweat began to form on Lee Jia’s neck as she realized that she still couldn’t sense the creature within her domain. In fact, the area she could sense with her domain was rapidly shrinking, as it was suppressed by another, more powerful domain. Suddenly, she realized why she hadn’t been able to sense anything from outside of the outcropping—it was being blocked by a domain. This panther was a xiantian level magical beast.

No, that wasn’t right either. As Lee Jia’s domain was squashed until only her own body remained within her senses, she noticed that the ‘creature’ wasn’t actually physically present. It faded into nothingness at the edges of its form. Was it a manifestation of spiritual energy so dense that it was actually visible? It wasn’t an elemental—they were made of mana, but the ‘bodies’ they formed were still substantial, even if that substance was something as ephemeral as fire or air. That left only one possibility.

“Oh, ancestors, you’re a spirit, aren’t you?”

The giant panther did not respond, or move at all. It simply continued to glare at her, making her feel like it would instantly pounce the moment she made a move. Lee Jia wished she had spent a bit more time studying spirits—she had no idea what to do here. She wished she could just become invisible—

Lee Jia had a flash of inspiration. A silly idea, really—but it was all she had. Focusing on her dantian, she quickly cycled the pathetic sliver of shadow qi within her—she wished she hadn’t recently wasted it on a demonstration for Eunae—but instead of infusing her body with it, she guided it out of her body and allowed it to dissipate into the air.

At first, the spirit didn’t react, and Lee Jia worried that she had wasted her effort. Then, it’s glowing eyes flashed, and it took a step towards her. Lee Jia flinched as it lowered its head to be level with hers and sniffed.

Suddenly, she felt the full force of the spirit’s domain crash into her. She felt a torrent of alien concepts and emotions that made her head spin. It was similar to when she had communed with her own spirit half, but it was so much harsher coming from an external force. She desperately tried to hold onto her consciousness and interpret the emotions assaulting her soul.

As suddenly as it had begun, the crushing force of the spirit’s domain retracted, leaving her with only a wicked headache, a terrible nosebleed, and a single familiar concept ringing in her mind.

Kin.