[Summary of Part I]

One Sunday in late September, with the 2096 All-High Magic Thesis Competition close at hand: The Kuroba siblings visit Tatsuya with a message from Maya Yotsuba, current head of the Yotsuba family. The message is a request that he assist them in capturing Gongjin Zhou, who has escaped Yokohama. Even though he’s suspicious that it’s a request rather than the usual order, Tatsuya still visits the Kudou family, whose headquarters is in Nara, to follow Zhou’s tracks; the man escaped into the Nara region of Kyoto. There, Tatsuya and the others meet a young man and magician named Minoru Kudou, who possesses equal beauty to Miyuki.

With Minoru’s guidance, Tatsuya and the others search for a base of operations belonging to the Traditionalists (a group of ancient magicians harboring Gongjin Zhou), but the Traditionalists and Chinese Taoists stand in their way. Meanwhile, Kouichi Saegusa, head of the Saegusa family, has been secretly communicating with Zhou but now wants to hide his own involvement and orders his confidant, Nakura, to assassinate the revolutionary. Zhou and Nakura meet in a deathmatch on the bank of the Katsura River in Kyoto. The one killed, however, is Nakura.

At the sudden notice of the death of her bodyguard, Mayumi begins to act in order to learn the truth.