Fates Parallel Chapter 331 - Lightspeed (Patreon)

After Eui’s grand accomplishment, Yoshika was more motivated than ever to reach some of the milestones that had been sitting frustratingly out of reach—after repairing the damage they’d done to the spring, of course.

She checked in with her family to inform them that she’d be throwing herself into training for a while, and topped Li Meili off on emotional substrate. While she did, she left Meili with a set of training instructions for Narae and Pan Jiaying, informing her disciples that Li Meili was to be in charge of their training in her absence.

Meili seemed pleased at the idea of acting as Yoshika’s representative. Hopefully that would be enough to see her through, but Yoshika gave her special permission to interrupt the closed door training in the event that she needed more.

Finally, after leaving the new avatar with Eunae for soul magic practice, Yoshika isolated herself at the peak of the mountain and got to work.

The first order of business was magic. She’d been slowly replenishing her supply of basic talismans such as Lightning Bolt, various mana shields, and other utility spells she rarely remembered to use in actual combat. Now, however, it was time for some serious spellcraft.

Miniaturizing Ja Yun’s version of Misun’s windwalking spell wasn’t a simple task, but Yoshika had seen it cast dozens of times, and she could cross reference it against other examples of the same spell.

Besides, with her ring, she didn’t need to completely miniaturize it. As long as she could charge the spell quickly, a huge unwieldy talisman would do just fine.

On top of that, the lessons she and Ja Yun had learned from reverse engineering the spell had finally been enough to make reasonable progress into the barrier spell that they’d copied from Do Hye so many years ago.

It was a bit of a misnomer to call it a ‘barrier.’ Since it faced inward it was more accurate to call it a seal. The difference was mostly academic, though, and it would be reasonably simple to modify, in theory.

Do Hye’s spellcraft was a lot more complex than Misun’s, but after a few days of work, she had a prototype that she hoped would do the trick. She made a formation to charge it passively—taking advantage of the dense mana at the mountain peak—then turned her thoughts elsewhere.

Flight. Technically, she could already fly. Eui was very adept at it, and as Yoshika, she could take Jia’s body along for the ride with some difficulty. That wasn’t good enough. She needed a technique that would let Jia fly under her own power, without wasting concentration or excess essence to maintain.

Like Eui had with her Star Sundering Slash, Yoshika took a step back from established methods in order to create a personalized technique from whole cloth.

Jia’s affinity was Lightning. Powerful and swift—it was an element that loved sudden movements and explosive energy, but also tended to direct that energy towards something. In the absence of a target, the ground was where lightning would naturally be drawn.

However, its adjacent elements were Light and Sky—traditionally elements well suited to flight. Why then did Jia struggle so?

In hindsight, it was embarrassingly obvious. She’d been trying to force techniques made for different physiques to work with hers. Narae’s flight was made by and for Narae—a combination of Gravity and Void perfectly suited for the space-bending little munchkin.

Jia was not well suited to those elements at all. She had some success with her mastery of the Body Lightening technique, as an application of Void essence, but Hayakawa Kaede’s Weightless Fist stood too far in opposition to Jia’s affinity to be of any practical use.

Yoshika shook her heads and put all thoughts of the techniques she already knew out of her head—she was supposed to be making something new. Unique to her.

She considered the elements that were suited to Jia’s affinity that might also be useful for flight. Sky and Light were obvious ones for her body, but in the realm of the soul only Void came anywhere close—unfortunately directly opposed to both Sky and Light along the Yin/Yang axis.

Was it possible to achieve bodily flight through martial arts alone? Probably not—otherwise Kaede wouldn’t have been nearly as shocked by Narae’s technique.

Sky, Light, and Void, then. She pondered over the ways those elements could combine. Yin, Yang, Fire, and Air. The undesirable combinations of those base elements would be Warmth, Plasma, and—she grimaced—Destruction.

Of course. Was there anything in Yoshika’s life that didn’t come with a risk of blowing herself to smithereens?

At least it was a fairly familiar territory. They were all elements that Yoshika used frequently, and knew how to work with. Though in this case, the trick was to avoid working with them.

Yoshika closed her eyes and fell into a deep meditation, pushing everything else aside until her entire world was reduced to the complex network of meridians that permeated her soul. At the core of that labyrinth was her dantian, connected by larger arterial meridians to her heart and brain.

It was possible to construct spiritual pathways through the body, and even within the mind—though the aura was such a fluid and malleable thing that such pathways were always temporary. Yoshika had done it before with Steps of the Stalker, and she knew for a fact that Rika and Narae’s signature techniques relied on the same principle.

Her own experiments with such methods were more limited. She used the connections between body, mind, and soul to transfer essence and ‘cheat’ with a few of her techniques, and to share essence between her bodies that one could cultivate more effectively than the other.

Now, she needed to construct an entirely new pathway in a way that she’d never heard of anyone else attempting.

In a slow and delicate process, Yoshika started from Jia’s body, where she naturally produced Lightning essence in abundance. Using the principles she’d learned from cultivating her soul, she slowly began to open meridians to redirect some of that essence towards a new purpose.

It was difficult. The meridians of the body naturally followed the same pathways as blood vessels and nerves, and each tiny divergence from that path was painful and hard won. She was, in effect, creating an entirely new bodily process that didn’t match any of her physical needs, and her biology fought against her.

After hours of literal blood, sweat, and tears, Yoshika had completed the first step of her new technique—a pathway that split some of her natural Lightning essence into a steady stream of Light and Sky ki which gathered in the chamber of her heart, next to her Tennin core.

For the moment, it went unused—naturally recombining into Lightning and being reabsorbed by her body. That was an important part—if Yoshika hadn’t designed it that way, the build up of essence would have disrupted Jia’s cultivation and potentially caused deviations or dramatically altered her physique.

Next was the soul. This part was much easier—she’d already mastered the Body Lightening technique, and it was just a matter of creating a new pathway for the Void qi to travel through her dantian and up towards her heart.

That went quickly, but she paused before making the final push. Here was where the risk was greatest. If she just released the Void qi into her body to mingle with the Sky and Light uncontrolled, there was a possibility that some of it would resolve into Destruction essence.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but a bunch of Destruction essence forming right next to Jia’s heart and core would be less than ideal.

Yoshika pushed her meditation even deeper. The work she needed to do was an order of magnitude finer. If the meridians she’d been working with before were comparable to veins and arteries, then now she was on the order of capillaries and nerves.

Piece by agonizing piece, Yoshika constructed a network of tiny vessels to contain the Void qi as it made its way through her heart chamber. Along the way, infinitesimal branches would collect motes of the Light and Sky ki, carefully mixing them together in a tightly controlled balance aimed towards a singular purpose.

Flight.

As agonizing as that process was, the final step was almost a relief. Once constructed, the new technique’s essence had nowhere to go. It was far too delicate to spread throughout her body, and her soul’s Yin-alignment would fundamentally alter the nature of Light and Sky into something unrecognizable.

There was only one option remaining—her aura.

Up the essence of flight went, through her arterial meridian and into her mind, where it was then released into Yoshika’s aura. As part of her domain, the aura was something that Yoshika had total control over. With little more than a thought, she wrapped Jia tightly in the essence of her new technique, then opened her eyes to see the results of her hard work.

Still cross-legged, Jia hovered a few inches off the ground, enveloped in a thin, visibly glowing shroud of essence.

Experimentally, she tried to direct herself a little bit higher, unfurling herself into a standing position as Jia rose several feet above the ground.

It was almost effortless.

Since Yoshika had made most of the process automatic, maintaining the technique was no more taxing than Body Lightening—a spiritual art so simple that even Pan Jiaying could already use it indefinitely.

Eager to test it out, Yoshika tried flying across the plateau, only to blink from one side to the other so fast she startled herself.

She was used to quick movements from Jia’s Lightning Steps, but this was in another league entirely. Controlling it without Absolute Awareness was going to take a lot of practice, but she had no doubt in her mind that it would be worth it.

Jia alighted on the ground and jumped into Eui’s arms.

“We did it!”

Eui chuckled and returned the hug with a smile.

“That was mostly you, I’m pretty sure. Good job.”

Riding the high of her success, Jia ran over to the sealing talisman, which had long since finished charging—how long had she been meditating?

“Let’s see if we can go three for three! I’m feeling lucky today—we’re really on a roll!”

Eui just smiled and shook her head.

“Don’t get your hopes up too high—this thing has stumped us for years.”

“Until now!”

Jia punctuated her statement by pushing her mana into the talisman and watching as it—burned away into dust without so much as a hint of manifestation. A failure.

Eui almost fell over laughing, and Jia threw her hands up.

“Bah! Whatever, I’m in too good a mood for that to ruin it. I can fly!”

Jia wrapped her aura of flight around herself, basking in the soft glow as she lifted herself into the air as easily as walking.

“Look at this! No wonder Narae loves it so much!”

She zipped around the plateau, rapidly blinking from one spot to another before she had to land, suddenly feeling a little sick.

“Oh, wait a second...”

A quick internal inspection revealed that in just a few moments, Jia had managed to almost entirely deplete her body of ki.

“Damn it! I thought this technique was more efficient.”

Eui smiled sardonically.

“Don’t worry, it is. One of us was paying attention—it only drains you like that when you make those ridiculous jumps. Just hovering or moving around at normal speed barely makes a dent. I’m guessing the cost rises exponentially with your speed.”

Jia frowned. And she’d been looking forward to incorporating her absurd new speed into her fighting style. She’d have to save that aspect of the technique for emergencies.

“I guess I can live with that. Now it just needs a name...”

“Oh? I can’t wait to hear it. You’ve always got the most unique naming sense.”

Jia stuck her tongue out at Eui, and sat down to consider it. Eui had named her technique so effortlessly, but hers had been pulled out from the depths of her soul, while Jia’s had been a more technical challenge.

“What about...Lightspeed Traversal?”

Eui snorted.

“Perfect. Very creative. Very Jia.”

“Oh, come on! I’d like to see you do any better.”

“I can’t. You’ve already achieved perfection. I can only bask in your brilliance.”

Jia was just about ready to pounce on Eui and teach her a lesson she’d never forget when Li Meili came running up the stairs to interrupt them.

“Yoshika! Thank the ancestors you’re done meditating!”

Sensing her urgency, Yoshika whirled on Li Meili with both bodies and answered in chorus.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Her mind swirled with possibilities. Was Li Meili on the verge of another breakdown? Had the Yan representatives arrived while she was meditating? Did Narae hurt herself training?

Meili shook her head.

“I’m fine. It’s Jung—she’s losing stability!”