---
Xīng Hé had just ended her training for the day.
The mirror floated dormant behind her, its surface dark. The daily limit had been reached—that invisible threshold beyond which the artefact refused to function.
She walked through the manor's corridors, body aching with familiar exhaustion.
A maid intercepted her near the bathing chambers.
"My lady, your friend is here."
"Alright. I'll meet her after I freshen up."
The maid bowed and departed.
---
The manor had been peaceful lately.
Ever since that day—when Yao Xian had taken control of the household, commanding guards and maids back to their duties—things had settled into rhythm. The chaos of those first two months had given way to something resembling normalcy.
But Xīng Hé couldn't quite read it.
Sometimes Yao's actions felt genuine. The way she organized things. The way she ensured Xīng Hé's needs were met. The way she'd taken responsibility for a household that wasn't hers to manage.
Sometimes it felt like kindness before brutality.
The soft hand that preceded the strike.
If it was genuine empathy, that raised questions. What would solicit such feeling from someone like Yao Xian? A woman who served Transcendents, who had lived for millennia, who had surely seen countless children pass through this system and vanish into war's machinery.
Even the guards weren't that nice.
Xīng Hé let the uncertainty settle without resolution. She didn't have enough information to judge.
She would watch.
She would learn.
And she would be ready for whichever version proved real.
---
The dining area was warm with the smell of prepared food.
Qin Hongyu sat at the table, red hair catching the ambient light, posture carrying less tension than during her breakdown days ago. She looked up as the door opened, and something like relief flickered across her features.
"How was training today?" Xīng Hé asked, settling into the seat across from her.
"Manageable." Hongyu's voice was steadier now. Not healed—the shadows behind her eyes hadn't faded—but functional. "I can control the displacement almost very well now."
She held up her hand. A small fruit from the table vanished from its position and reappeared a foot to the left. Instantaneous—one moment in the bowl, the next elsewhere, as if the intervening space had simply been skipped.
Hongyu winced slightly. The displacement had cost her something.
"That's good to hear," Xīng Hé said.
She meant it. Hongyu was making more progress at control—at practical application of conceptual abilities in precise, repeatable ways. Her friend could move things. Could relocate objects and perhaps eventually people, shifting them from one point to another without crossing the distance between.
Xīng Hé's own concepts remained stubbornly resistant.
But she wasn't worried.
There was a hierarchy in concepts—she'd theorized as much during training. Some were simply superior to others. Some truths ran deeper.
Displacement was useful. Versatile. A solid ability for combat and support.
But it wasn't derived from core laws of reality.
It wasn't Balance, Restoration, or Preservation.
The distinction mattered, even if she couldn't yet prove how much.
---
Training didn't give you more abilities.
Evolution granted new powers—as you advanced through stages, your concept expressed itself in increasingly sophisticated ways. But training?
Training was refinement.
How to use what you already had. How well your abilities functioned under pressure. Which scenarios played to your strengths and which exposed your weaknesses. How to leverage your concept against opposition.
Understanding provided the foundation. But understanding alone didn't prepare you for real danger.
Could you steer your mind to act when death approached? Could you maintain focus when fear clawed at your thoughts? Could you use your abilities in battle's chaos, when nothing went according to plan and every second demanded decisions you weren't ready to make?
That was what training addressed.
The guidance Hongyu received wasn't personal—not like Xīng Hé's private access to the mirror artefact. But at least they had active mentors. At least they received the basics of functioning as divine existences in a world that would soon demand everything.
One of these days, Xīng Hé would have to test her strength against others.
She leaned toward support—her concepts suited it. But that didn't mean she was useless in battle. Restoration could close wounds. Preservation could maintain states. Balance could... she wasn't sure yet.
She needed to find out.
Soon.
---
"So what's the plan?" Xīng Hé asked. "When are you moving to the next stage?"
Hongyu set down her utensils.
"There's news. We were told a few days ago that some people would be joining us."
"Joining you?"
"Mm. They said their concepts were weird. Not straight physical applications." Hongyu shrugged. "But every concept is useful, so they're figuring out how to apply them in combat."
Group Two, Xīng Hé thought.
The abstract concepts. Dreams, illusions, memories, commands. Elder sister Bai had mentioned them months ago. The ones sorted into the second group, lagging behind those with more immediately practical abilities.
They were being integrated now.
"They gave us a grace period," Hongyu continued. "One month to pick our own teams. Five people per team."
"And the criteria?"
"Nobody knows exactly. I think maybe one of the weird ones per team? Plus active combatants and support. Something balanced."
"If you don't pick reasonably?"
"They assign us themselves."
Xīng Hé nodded slowly.
Her friend's assessment made sense. They weren't Transcendents or Ascendants—beings who could fight alone. At their stage, cooperation was essential. Teams that combined different strengths, covered different weaknesses.
One abstract concept user for versatility.
Active combatants for direct engagement.
Support roles for healing, protection, enhancement.
It was logical.
It was also the beginning of something larger.
---
Why are there so few rulers?
The question surfaced from knowledge she'd absorbed years ago, reading texts disguised as fairy tales.
If there are so many divine existences, why do only a handful sit at the top?
The answer was brutal in its simplicity.
Only the living could evolve.
You couldn't advance if you died. Couldn't climb the stages if your existence ended on a battlefield. And battles happened constantly—for resources, territory, knowledge, the thousand reasons beings with power found to destroy each other.
Many died.
Few reached the higher stages.
And as the gap widened—as survivors grew stronger and competition grew fiercer—tension only increased. Those below tried to rise. Those above tried to prevent threats from emerging. Everyone fought everyone, and the mountain of corpses grew higher with each passing century.
A vicious cycle.
Self-perpetuating. Built into the very structure of divine existence.
Xīng Hé stared at the food before her, appetite diminished.
Stopping the system isn't enough.
The realization crystallized with painful clarity.
If she simply destroyed what existed—tore down the Transcendents, ended the drafting, freed the children—what then? The fundamental dynamics would still exist. Competition for resources. Conflict between the powerful. The endless drive to evolve, to grow stronger, to reach the next stage before someone else became a threat.
She needed more than destruction.
She needed to create a new path.
Something that addressed the underlying causes. Something that broke the cycle instead of just interrupting it. Something that would endure after she was gone, that wouldn't collapse back into the same patterns.
Even if I succeed, the future will repeat unless I build something different.
The scope of what she was attempting expanded in her mind—vast, terrifying, almost impossible to comprehend.
She would have to do more than fight.
She would have to create.
---
Hongyu was watching her.
"You're thinking again. That face you make when something heavy is going on inside."
Xīng Hé blinked, pulling herself back to the present.
"Just considering the future. What happens after."
Hongyu nodded slowly, accepting the non-answer.
They ate in companionable silence—Hongyu demolishing her meal with the enthusiasm of someone whose training didn't come with private chefs, Xīng Hé picking at her food while her mind continued to churn through implications and possibilities.
The future was coming.
Whether she was ready or not.
---
End of Chapter 31