Once again, everyone gathered in the center of the tree. Atlas couldn’t believe that Bro had really managed to achieve what he had struggled with for so long after just a simple explanation. An explanation that, as Atlas now knew, was flawed or at least didn't offer the easiest solution to the problem. But against all odds, when he arrived, the seaweed was straight as a line and reached halfway out of the bucket.
"See, I always said I’m a genius! But you didn’t want to believe me!" said Bro, laughing, his eyes still on the weed, his hands in a forward position as if he were pushing something away.
"But how?" asked Atlas, still in disbelief. "My explanation was... Huu has an easier way, so how are you doing it? Are you really coating the weed's chi paths?"
"I’m a genius. I naturally found my own way," answered Bro with a smug grin.
Huu and Atlas looked at each other, the same question and curiosity in their minds.
"So, what did you do?" asked Atlas after seeing that Huu would let him do the talking.
"Well, your explanation sucked. Like usual. Hehe. I mean, who would be crazy enough to coat the chi pathways of a plant? Even sensing the damned thing is almost impossible. But it gave me an important hint. As our wise and eternally youthful elder taught us, every being has chi that interacts with the world around it, and you told me that the chi inside the plant prevented me from bending it. So, I just tried to sense where the chi of the weed had the strongest connection and interaction with the ambient chi before blasting that spot with my chi, pushing the weed's chi out. At least that’s how I imagined it. And see, the weed is doing what I want," explained Bro, still letting the weed circle around in the bucket.
"This solution is..." started Atlas but was interrupted by a certain proud father celebrating so loudly that even the fire lord on the other side of the world should have gotten the message.
And as if to prove Atlas’s thoughts before he could voice them, the seaweed looked like it was withering the moment Bro’s concentration was interrupted.
"MY SON IS THE BEST!" yelled Bro’s father once again, and Atlas decided to keep quiet for now, as technically, Bro had become a plant bender.
As the celebrations reignited more intense than ever, with laughter and praise echoing through the tree, Atlas’s attention shifted away from the joyous scene. His eyes fell on Mi, who stood slightly apart from the others. While Bro was earning the praises of the hunters, Atlas couldn’t help but notice Mi looking a bit absent. There was a certain sadness in her eyes, despite her smile, that was only visible to those who knew Mi well."
Atlas knew it must be hard for her to see both of them becoming enlightened. Her look reminded him a little of Hermione when she lost to Ron in chess. Mi was similarly proud of her intelligence and control, so getting beaten by Bro irritated her. Not so much that she needed to fake that smile, but enough that it would bother her for weeks unless she achieved something equally important, which was not really possible in this case. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be determined enough to try.
So while the others were celebrating the third enlightened, Mi was thinking about how to become the fourth, while Atlas was contemplating how he could use Bro’s solution to create a fifth, tenth, or even make the whole village into plant benders.
It didn’t take a genius to know that Bro’s method, despite its ease of use, was not only a chi sink that wasn’t practical for larger amounts of weeds but was also harmful to the plants as Bro essentially killed them by replacing their chi. Or at least he killed them the moment he withdrew his chi, leaving them without any to sustain themselves. But that didn’t mean that Bro’s methods didn’t inspire Atlas. On the contrary, Bro had found the key component to make plant bending something learnable by everyone. At least to some degree, as his method of finding an “entrance” to the chi pathways of the plants was simple and only required a slightly above-average ability to sense chi. If he combined that with Huu’s method of blocking key positions, he was sure he could develop a method that was easy to use and learn, even if it would be limited to small plants like seaweed.
At the end of this thought, Atlas let out a small chuckle as he remembered what Huu had told him about discovering their own truth—their own ways.
The second celebration lasted even longer than the first one, mainly because of Bro’s father, and Bro himself didn’t even try to hide their excitement. When the night was almost over, Huu managed to convince them that their time to meditate wasn’t over yet.
And when Huu asked Bro if he wanted to talk about his experience together with Atlas and him, Atlas suggested Mi come with them, as he wanted to discuss his new idea, and listening in could probably help Mi more than meditating for an hour or two more.
“What do you mean my way is bad? You’re just pissed because you overlooked something so simple,” protested Bro after Atlas listed the flaws of his method.
“If you think your method is so good, then why don’t you try to bend a hundred seaweeds like Huu? You would be exhausted before you reached half of it,” argued Atlas, annoyed that Bro didn’t even let him finish.
“Bro, Atlas, calm down. It’s good to be passionate, but the way you are now, you won’t learn anything during this exchange. Only those who are willing to listen can expect to better themselves,” interrupted Huu, quelling their quarrel.
“Fine, then tell me what your grand idea is,” said Bro almost sarcastically. But Atlas decided to ignore his provocation and continue the discussion.
After five minutes, giving them all a small outline of what he wanted to try, even Huu was visibly excited. The usually calm and relaxed old man didn’t even wait for Bro or Mi to give any feedback before he summoned a vine to go down the tree to gather a bunch of seaweed.
A few tests later, the results were obvious. The plan was feasible enough, even though the results were a little subpar as finer control of the seaweed wasn’t possible. The reason for that was that they tested the technique under the premise that the user wasn’t able to sense the chi paths and couldn’t locate the key sections that would need to be blocked. So, only one part was blocked.
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With the initial trials showing promise, Atlas felt a mix of excitement and apprehension. The method, though somewhat unrefined, was proving to be effective. Now, it was time for the next step. Teaching someone who wasn’t a plantbender yet. A little nervous Mi began to follow Atlas instructions. After twenty-five minutes, and Atlas was sure that Mi would never admit how close she was to crying in the second half of her attempts, the seaweed began to move.
The one happiest about this success was, surprisingly, Bro. Despite a few smug comments about doing it first, he almost caused Mi and him to fall down the Banyan-Grove-Tree as he jumped at her for a hug. But except for Bro’s overly enthusiastic way to celebrate, Atlas could see the relief Mi felt from her posture alone.
What followed wasn’t another long celebration like Bro’s but lessons for the hunters who came along.
An hour later, while Mi’s and Bro’s father were still arguing over who would be able to do it first, Tar had already grasped the concept and was literally bending a seaweed behind his back.
After another hour, all of them had accomplished what had once been a once-in-a-generation achievement before. And Atlas was more or less sure that the position or prestige of “enlightened” would soon vanish. A thing he only realized after Bro said he wanted to see the village elders’ eyes when they all returned as enlightened.
“I hate to interrupt your euphoria, but except for Atlas, you can’t really be called enlightened yet. As you know, we use the Banyan-Grove-Tree as a place to meditate on plant bending because the dense chi makes it far easier. This dense chi is what allows you to find the spot you need to send your chi into. So, unless you are in a place like that, you won’t be able to plant bend yet. But I think, with the experience you made now, and a lot of training, it should be possible for you to get there quite easily. So maybe, before we celebrate the whole time here, we should use the opportunity to practice more,” said Huu, to everyone’s displeasure.
And so everyone, including Huu, spent the next day practicing plant bending with varying degrees of success. Huu, as the one with the most experience, was just trying to replicate Atlas’s method and evaluated it as a fantastic exercise to improve one’s control and senses. Atlas, on the other hand, now fully grasped Huu’s method of plant bending and was attempting to use it on multiple seaweeds or vines at the same time, even though he still wasn’t able to create a plant monster like Huu. The others had made a contest out of it, distancing themselves from the tree step by step, manipulating a new seaweed each time. And many of those weeds didn’t survive this encounter as they overdid it with the chi input.
A day later, none of them had reached a level that satisfied Huu, but that didn’t hinder them from beaming with pride and boasting about their accomplishments when they returned.
The news of the discovery spread quickly, sending shockwaves through the village. The village elder almost had a stroke when Huu told him that Atlas was enlightened and that they had found a way to make most of the village into one. It challenged one of his core beliefs that the swamp chose the enlightened to guide and protect the village, but after a three-day-long phase of denial and a long explanation from Atlas and Huu, he had no choice but to accept it.
For the village, this discovery was, in one way, monumental, and on the other hand, it changed almost nothing. Huu, as a long-time enlightened, still kept his revered position, as the people trusted him with their lives, while Atlas’s position as the village’s young teacher consolidated. And while he didn’t get the same treatment a normal enlightened could have expected, the merit of finding a way to “enlighten” everyone gave his words weight.
So, after theory lessons with Atlas, Huu scheduled outings to the Banyan-Grove-Tree with different groups of hunters. And only after some pestering from Atlas did the village elder accept that even the benders who usually stayed in the village could profit from that, as plant bending could hasten the development of the village.
With this development, Atlas’s plans of finding the shipwreck and leaving the village were put on hold. He was ordered to stay in the village and teach the hunters and benders who showed interest, while Huu took them on outings to the Banyan-Grove-Tree.
These lessons lasted three months. Three months where he didn’t need to hunt and had no excuses to leave the village. But this didn’t stop him from experimenting with his spirit form. These experiments gave him a more natural understanding of the chi paths of different plants, increasing his control and efficiency even above Huu’s despite his years of experience. He also tried to study his now partially wooden foot more extensively. Despite the persistent numbness, the weird colorization, bark-like roughness of his skin, and the hardening of his flesh, it functioned like a normal foot and retained its flexibility. But the transformation seemed to be permanent, which was the reason Atlas didn’t risk transforming more of his body. At least until he could study the phenomenon on some war criminals in the future. He had hoped that this transformation was a sign that he could use his bowtruckle form in the real world too, but everything he tried in that regard didn’t yield any results. Atlas hypothesized that this was caused by the difference in chi and spirit energy compared to magic from the Harry Potter universe. But this could only be tested if he visited another world with magic.
In the last month of Atlas’s lessons, the village began to transform. Most adults in the village at least grasped the basics of plant bending and created things Atlas hadn’t even thought about. The villagers had extended plant bending to trees, the obvious next step, but unlike Atlas expected, they bent more than just a few branches. With ten to twenty benders working together, they started to move entire trees. At first, just to get more space, but they quickly started to bend the trees to form complex structures inside the trees, and soon the first homes within the trees were built. It was something Atlas had thought impossible, as such a drastic change should have killed the trees in the same way as trying to let someone grow another arm with bloodbending would result in a disaster, but the trees were far more durable than he had thought. And if the change was done over a few days instead of in a few minutes, the tree adapted to its new form. And so the hunters used this technique to build outposts inside the swamp, while the villagers reconstructed the village into something of a tribal metropolis where branches were bent in unnatural ways to form stairs and bridges to connect different trees.
Atlas naturally participated in these endeavors, and with his unique method to plant bend, he had the most control when it came to creating finer details in these wooden structures. So, when the villagers wanted a door they could lock, drawers, or water pumps that transported water up the trees even without bending, they went to Atlas, causing his workload to increase even when the lessons he needed to teach became fewer and fewer.
Yet, despite the bustling activity, a growing restlessness gnawed at him. He was already behind his initial plans, as he still hadn’t made contact with the outside world. His plans to introduce ironworks and electricity were also delayed because he couldn’t get to the wreck, even though he was sure with the current development, his tribe would have a golden age of development and advancement. Unless, of course, traditions stopped that from happening. So, Atlas made up his mind that at the latest, he would leave the swamp in six months at the beginning of the next year (92 AG). And the first step towards that was talking with Mi, Bro, and his mother.