She just groaned. “Gimme a second.” She was fine, but still… that had been intense. “I don’t think I have enough talismans on me for a second spar.”

“You do.” It wasn’t even a question. Avyr just knew her well enough that it was obvious.

“I don’t think I have enough bones left to break for a second spar.”

“I didn’t break any of your bones.”

“That’s what you think. My poor aching arm says otherwise.” Avyr just rolled his eyes, and after a second Lily broke out into muted chuckling. “That was a good match. How do you keep dealing with my lightning? I don’t think I’m going to figure out a way to bypass… whatever it is you’re doing.”

“You rely too much on the actual nature

of lightning in that attack. I did some research—” because of course he would— “on the properties of lightning and what makes it function like it does, and figured that while I couldn’t react fast enough to move out of the way of that strike, I could move my qi inside of me rapidly enough to disrupt the energy of the strike into qi instead of flesh.”

“Which would react differently than your actual self…” she nodded, then shoved at him with a scowl. Of course it still did nothing, but it was the thought that mattered. “That’s stupidly simple! Dammit, I was hoping for something that I could at least defeat by cleverly altering the formation…” but, no, the solution was almost genius in its simplicity. Getting hit? Just block better. It wasn’t really some clever trick— anything that’d allow the lightning to more easily move through a barrier of qi might as well just be a bullet or whatever with how much slower it’d be. “I guess this would invalidate the light-based attack talisman I’ve been working on?”

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Avyr flicked his tail, silent for a moment. “Maybe? Qi is not opaque

, per say… unless you were going to fight a shadow cultivator or what have you. I might need to force a qualitative change on my qi to accomplish a defense against that, and if I have to do that, then Xinshi will basically be a punching bag for the formation.” Well, at least there was some good news there. She’d been worried her entire arsenal had just been invalidated. “How did you do that thing with the shield-planes? They were exceptionally strong.”

“Oh! That!” Smugly, she pulled out the vial of blood she’d been playing with before the battle. “That was a really cool trick. I wasn’t, per say, actually changing the formation at all, but because those basic shield formations are qi neutral, by holding them right next to the material…” Avyr made a churr of appreciation at her genius— which he well should, because it’d been hard to do that! “It’s closer to array work than formations work, but I’ve been putting a little practice into that sort of thing recently.” They were so much more finicky than formations, which she could just… write and then use— no, array just had to be frustrating about every part of their creation.

Though, maybe that was because she wasn’t a cultivator and couldn’t see the qi that was, by the very definition of the nature of what an array was, the most critical part of the entire ensemble. Maybe. Just maybe. Who could know? At the very least it was more fun to work on that then spar with someone two levels above her.

Still… tests were coming soon, and she couldn’t afford to fail. “One more spar, and then we’ll work on the more academic side of the final exams, alright?” Avyr didn’t respond— not verbally, at least. He just got that dangerous glint to his eyes, that sharp edge of triumphant victory… and walked smoothly over to his side of the arena.

Lily sighed, and settled in for a fight.

It would be a long day.