Leo left Williams' office and walked aimlessly.

  He should have gone back to the dorm. Tom was probably waiting for an update. Instead he kept walking, turning over what Williams had said.

  Poison.

  He turned a corner and heard the clang of iron in the weight room.

  Jimbo racked the bar with a grunt and sat up, wiping his face with his shirt. He spotted Leo in the doorway.

  "Leo. You look like someone told you your dog died."

  "Just thinking."

  "Dangerous habit." Jimbo scooted to one side of the bench and gestured at the open space. "Grab a rack if you want. Or just stand there looking tragic. Either way."

  Leo walked in and sat on the bench across from Jimbo. He didn't reach for any weights.

  "How have things been in the Catacombs?" Leo asked. "When will Boston Command need us back?"

  Jimbo leaned back and stretched his shoulders. "The cults are licking their wounds. After the Battle of Fort Cambridge, they stopped all raids. Our patrols haven't made contact in weeks."

  "So it's over?"

  "For now." Jimbo shrugged. "What they'll do is wait. Push the Gold Cores who are close to breakthrough into Nascent Soul. Refill their ranks with fresh Novembers before they make another move against our convoys."

  "How long?"

  "Who knows. As long as the little guys can stall. Nobody wants to try their luck against a scorpion." Jimbo grinned. "I put in for leave from military service."

  Leo raised an eyebrow. "Leave? In the middle of a deployment cycle?"

  "This is the best chance Yale has had at the college playoffs in years. Everyone is going to work hard for this. I want to be part of it."

  Leo stared at him. "Why do you care this much about the college playoffs? It's just a game."

  Jimbo gave him a look.

  "First of all, it's far from pointless." He held up a finger. "The starters of the national championship team get offered Reserve Gold Core Charter if they sign up for military service."

  "Reserve Gold Core Charter?"

  "Full Gold Core cultivation subsidies. Same tier as active duty, same spirit vein access, same advancement support. But you pick your own missions. You choose your deployments, form your own teams, fight in the Catacombs of your choice. The only requirement is that you earn a respectable amount of merits each cycle."

  Jimbo grabbed the water bottle and took a long drink. "You probably think a rich kid like me would have his Gold Core taken care of already, right? My family doesn't care about Gold Cores. They care about Nascent Souls. Getting the charter puts me at the front of the line when it's time to talk about who gets the Nascent Soul resources."

  "The best part is you pick your own missions. Family teams, private expeditions, whatever you want, as long as you earn enough merits." He gestured vaguely. "Harry's already forming an expedition team. The charter lets me do both at the same time."

  "And the defenders?"

  "Non-captain defenders get Military Gold Core Charters. Still military, still subsidized, but you're in the regular assignment pool." Jimbo shrugged. "Honestly? I'd be happy to serve in that capacity too. You can earn that just by standing out in the playoffs or conference championships."

  Leo nodded slowly.

  "But most importantly," Jimbo said, leaning forward on the bench, "the game is fun."

  Leo waited.

  "The crowds, Leo. Tens of thousands of people screaming your name while you're pulling a high-g turn over the fort. The camaraderie. The fame. Walking into a restaurant in New Haven and watching the host's eyes go wide because she recognizes you from the highlights."

  Jimbo's grin widened. "The girls."

  Leo felt something crack in the wall he'd built up.

  He grinned back.

  Jimbo pointed at him. "See? There it is. That's what I'm talking about." He settled back against the bench. "I think you've been taking all of this way too seriously, Chen."

  "I have a lot on my plate."

  "Everyone has a lot on their plate." Jimbo spread his hands. "And they still enjoy the game. It’s just a game, why do you have to be mad at yourself for losing."

  Leo thought for a moment, trying to put what he was feeling into words.

  "I don't know how to treat it like a game," Leo said finally. "Everyone I face in the regular season is way weaker than me. The only person who can actually give me a real fight is Mateo, and I'm pretty sure the whole thing is rigged from the start."

  Before Jimbo could respond, a hand dropped onto Leo's shoulder from behind.

  "Listen, Leo." Ellie slid onto the bench beside him, her arm looping casually around his shoulders. She was still in her practice flight suit, the collar unzipped, her dark hair pulled back in a loose bun.

  "What is there to lose? Any second you're out on that field, you're gaining something. Experience, reputation, instagram followers. There is only upside."

  "Next year, Mateo is going to be banned from collegiate competition. And then it's just you and me up there. We'll win the national championships easily."

  "Plus," Ellie continued, tilting her head to catch his eye, "Mateo is a whole realm above you. Once you break through to Foundation Establishment and become a true Tier 4.5 flyer with a new sword, you will crush that kid."

  She poked him in the chest. "The only reason you can even fight him right now is because his cultivation outranks you by an entire major realm. The moment you break through to Foundation Establishment, Mateo will run every time he sees you."

  Leo laughed.

  "That's right," he said.

  Ellie grinned back. Jimbo laughed and clapped.

  "There he is," Jimbo said. "Now grab some weights and do something useful. You look like you haven't touched iron in a week."

  ---

  Lin Mei arrived at the training complex the next morning and made a beeline straight for Leo the moment she spotted him. Her hair was pinned back with two formation-etched clips that doubled as diagnostic instruments, a tablet tucked under one arm. She had the toned frame of a former athlete gone academic, and the look in her eyes said she was eager to start researching her favorite research subject.

  It felt like forever since he'd last seen her, even though it had been less than a year. Those weeks of training under her were burned into his memory. Days alternating between Reyes's g-force torture machine and trying to wrap his mind around perceiving himself from outside himself. He'd thrown up more times than he could count.

  And then he'd found out there was a spiritual medicine shortcut for third person perspective that nobody had mentioned during any of that suffering. He was still a little salty about it.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  "Leo!" Lin Mei reached him with a warm smile. "Shame I couldn't be there to help you train for the threading. I was caught up working with the Patriots." She tilted her head. "I saw the footage, though. Zhao did excellent work with you."

  "Thanks, Coach Mei." Leo paused. "So what's the plan? Teach me how to beat Mateo? Some secret technique? Sneaky way to apply poison to a sword before the match?"

  Lin Mei adjusted her glasses. "Not exactly, Leo. I'm here to help you train your third person perspective and reach the next stage."

  "There's another stage?" Leo stopped walking. "I thought I was doing well. I've been told I'm better than some NFL flyers."

  "You are." Lin Mei set her tablet on a nearby equipment rack and turned to face him. "The dual control you showed at Fort Cambridge, simultaneously operating the scorpion claw and your Moonrider with exceptional precision. I have Flyers on the Patriots who can't do that."

  She gave him a little grin. "Which means you're ready for the next stage."

  Leo perked up.

  "Are you aware of how third person perspective relates to the Nascent Soul domain?" Coach Mei asked.

  "Zhao told me that third person perspective is similar to what a Nascent Soul can sense within their domain."

  Coach Mei nodded. "That's correct, but the key word is 'similar.' There is one important difference." She held up a finger. "A Nascent Soul cultivator is aware of everything within their domain, yes. But they remain present in their own body. They can execute martial arts and spell arts while maintaining that omniscient awareness. A third person perspective flyer cannot."

  She began pacing slowly.

  "Piloting one's body in third person perspective is a shortcut. The jump to true omniscience is too large to make in one leap, so third person perspective cultivators learn to treat their body as a piece on the board. An object to be moved externally. You know this well."

  "So what's the next stage?"

  "Omnidirectional Awareness." Coach Mei stopped pacing. "You maintain full awareness from a first person perspective, while simultaneously holding the complete spherical perception of third person perspective."

  Leo stared at her. "How is that even possible?"

  "It's something almost every Gold Core attempts in their lifetime," Lin Mei said. "Plenty of them succeed, and I'm confident you can too." She picked her tablet back up. "Omnidirectional Awareness is immensely helpful when forming the divine infant. This is why so many Gold Cores compete for the third person perspective spiritual medicine."

  She tapped the tablet without looking at it. "You only get one chance at forming the divine infant. Cultivate this now, while your brain is still young and plastic, and you won't have to worry about failing and stuck as a Gold Core forever."

  "It will dramatically expand your options." Coach Mei's grinned at Leo. "Give you a whole new level of combat capabilities. Right now, in third person perspective, your body is a remote object, so you cannot channel techniques through it. Omnidirectional Awareness changes that. You'll be able to use martial arts and spell arts in flight."

  Leo frowned. "I'm already using treasures two realms above me. My Moonrider hits at peak Gold Core. What spell art am I going to cast at Qi Refining that adds anything to that?"

  "That's fair," Coach Mei said. "But there is one domain where you exceed Mateo."

  Leo thought for a moment.

  "My divine sense is higher?"

  "Exactly." Coach Mei's expression sharpened. "Coach Williams told me you're looking for a way to neutralize Mateo and take him out of the game. One avenue we can exploit is the fact that collegiate Tier Four armor does not provide divine sense protection."

  "Why not?"

  "Cost. The NFL tier armor includes full divine sense shielding, but the collegiate leagues cut that feature to keep the equipment affordable. The justification is that collegiate players lack the divine sense disparity to weaponize it against each other." She tilted her head. "You are the exception."

  "That sounds so much better than using poison. Why didn't Coach Williams tell me about this?"

  Coach Mei let out a short laugh. "Leo, you cannot channel divine sense attacks while piloting in third person perspective. And omnidirectional Awareness is a technique that most Gold Core cultivators fail to achieve in a decade. You want to do it in two months at Qi Refining."

  "And secondly," she continued. "Divine sense based attacks are banned under collegiate rules. Precisely because the armor doesn't protect against them. The NCAA considers it an unacceptable safety risk. Weaponizing divine sense is just as illegal as poison."

  "That's the rules' problem," he said countered indigently. "I'm tired of being restricted by rules that only seem to apply to me. The High School Dao Discussion Tournament banned me before I could even say hello. The officials looked the other way when Mateo fought but shut the door on me before I had a chance. Everyone keeps trying to handicap me."

  He crossed his arms. "That's the NCAA's problem."

  Coach Mei smiled. "Good. Let's get started."

  "One condition."

  She raised an eyebrow.

  "I want the first author position," Leo said. "On whatever paper you publish about this. If I manage to cultivate Omnidirectional Awareness before the Ivy League championship game, my name goes first."

  Coach Mei looked puzzled. "Why? As far as I can tell, you have no intention of pursuing academia."

  "I know Zhao thinks publication record is important. I want to rub it in his face."

  Coach Mei laughed.

  "Deal," she said. "If you can cultivate Omnidirectional Awareness in two months, you can have first author." She grinned. "I suspect I'll be keeping my authorship."

  ---

  They started that afternoon.

  Coach Mei had commandeered a corner of a training hall and set up a space that looked oddly ordinary. A padded mat. A wooden training dummy on a spring-loaded base. A table with a set of carved wooden blocks, each one etched with a different formation character.

  "Sit," Coach Mei said.

  Leo sat cross-legged and extended his divine sense outward. The familiar sphere of awareness bloomed around him. His own body resolved as a shape among shapes. A piece on the board. He had done this so many time it was almost second nature.

  "Good," Coach Mei said. "Now open your eyes."

  Two entirely separate streams of information crashed into each other. His divine sense showed him the room as a three-dimensional sphere, able to see every angle simultaneously. His eyes showed him the room from inside his own skull, flat and forward-facing.

  The two perceptions overlapped and disagreed. His brain tried to merge them but failed.

  "That's the hard part," Coach Mei said. "Third person perspective works by shutting down your normal sensory framework and replacing it. Omnidirectional Awareness requires you to run both at the same time."

  "It's like having two pairs of eyes pointed in different directions."

  "Close. But the goal is to stop experiencing them as two separate things. You're not trying to split your mind. You're trying to widen it until both streams fit inside the same attention." She knelt beside the mat. "Right now you can hear me talking and feel the mat underneath you at the same time. You don't experience those as competing channels. They're just... perception."

  "That's different. Those are passive."

  "Are they? You had to learn that too. You were just an infant when it happened, so you don't remember the effort."

  Leo tried to hold both perceptions simultaneously. For about two seconds, something almost clicked. His divine sense and his vision began to layer over each other, the spherical awareness gaining the color and texture of sight, his visual field gaining the depth and omnidirectionality of divine sense.

  Then his concentration slipped and the whole thing collapsed.

  "Again," Coach Mei said.

  Three seconds. Four. His left hand twitched involuntarily during the overlap, fingers curling without his intent.

  "That twitch is important," Coach Mei said, making a note on her tablet. "Your body is starting to receive commands from two sources. Your regular motor control and your third person perspective piloting. They're competing for control. That conflict is what you need to resolve."

  They went for two hours. By the end, Leo could hold the dual perception for roughly eight seconds. His head ached, but differently from early third person perspective training. That had felt like tearing something loose. This felt like trying to flex a muscle he'd never known he had.

  The exercises Coach Mei designed over the following days were maddeningly simple. Hold third person perspective. Open your eyes. Pick up a wooden block from the table using your own hand. Not by piloting your body as an external object, but by reaching out and grasping it the way a normal person would. While maintaining full spherical awareness.

  He couldn't do it.

  Every time he engaged his body through normal motor control, his divine sense sphere wavered. Every time he stabilized the sphere, his hand moved with the puppet-like quality of third person perspective piloting.

  "You're switching," Coach Mei would say. "You go sphere, sphere, sphere, and then the moment you reach for the block you drop into first person for a fraction of a second and jump back. You're toggling, not merging."

  "I know what I'm doing wrong. I just can't stop doing it."

  "That's the nature of the problem. This is a felt skill, like balancing. You can't think your way onto a bicycle."

  On good days, he could hold the merged state for fifteen, twenty seconds. Pick up a block, turn it over, set it back down, all while perceiving every angle and experiencing his hand as both an external object in his awareness sphere and his own hand, fingers obeying intent rather than command.

  On bad days, he couldn't hold five seconds.

  "The mistake most cultivators make," Coach Mei told him one evening, "is treating this as a divine sense problem. They push harder. Burn more spiritual energy trying to force the merge."

  "And that doesn't work?"

  "It works eventually. In ten or fifteen years." She cleaned her glasses. "The cultivators who progress quickly realize this is a problem of identity. Third person perspective asks you to let go of self. Omnidirectional Awareness asks you to pick self back up again without dropping the awareness. You have to be both the player and the piece at the same time."

  Leo lay on the mat and stared at the ceiling.

  The player and the piece.

  He'd spent months learning to separate the two. To treat his body as an object, distant and instrumental. Now he had to put himself back inside it without losing the view from above.

  It felt, in a strange way, like the Heart of Flesh. The first stage demanded dissolution. The second stage demanded coming back to life.

  He closed his eyes. Extended his divine sense. Opened his eyes.

  Two streams. Two truths. One attention.