"You can sit." Muwadd showed him to a chair next to him before he turned to the three men. "By now, you all have heard the news about the ancient treasure that has appeared in our territory. If we know about it, other sects will also know about it. We are closer, and that means we know about it first. But in one or two months, the news will spread to most places. Inner disciple Barindana and his team have already failed and we don't have much time. We are lucky I have sent Tairen with them. Otherwise, we would have nothing now."
"What? You didn't tell us about that." The three men complained.
Muwadd shrugged. "And now I am telling you, do you have any problems with that?"
The three men hesitated but then shook their heads. They were the guardians of the three mountain peaks within the sect, and all of them have formed their core. But none of them wanted to quarrel with Muwadd, mainly because he achieved core formation more than two hundred years before any of them and he was the sect leader's younger brother.
Muwadd pointed to Tairen and said, "With his spiritual sense, he can see more. Both of them are my students and I know what each of them is capable of. That is why I made the decision. Tairen, you can tell us your findings."
Tairen nodded.
"The treasure in question is real. It's a big, stone castle. The size of it was almost as big as the palace in Biyakis. It is made of some white stone. I couldn't tell the composition but I saw some seals on it. White stones like that aren't common. Perhaps it was the seals that hid what the stone looks like, I wasn't sure. However, the city's gates and all the doors I could see inside the castle are made of dark metal."
"Dark metal? How dark?"
"Black," replied Tairen.
The hall became silent. There was dark metal and there was black metal. Black metal was the heaviest most valuable and also the most dangerous of every metal. It didn't rust and could absorb pol and cultivation more than anything in the world. Any metal could be purified and made into a dark metal, but such alterations could never make a black metal.
A thin sword that was made of black metal could cost up to fifty thousand ayrids or even hundreds of thousands when auctioned.
"There are ten cultivators in the castle, and twelve slaves."
"Only ten? Are you sure you didn't make a mistake?"
Tairen nodded. "They are most likely just ten. I explored many parts of the castle with my sense and didn't find any more people. Though some of them may be hiding their cultivation, I believe they do not have people at your level, martial uncles. The most powerful among them is a hundred and fifty or eighty years. A lightning-style cultivator that hasn't achieved body tempering whatsoever."
"The most powerful is at foundation establishment, and they haven't even achieved body tempering?" The three men couldn't believe their ears. How come such a lowly cultivator came about such a treasure? Was it luck?
Tairen sighed. He would like them to listen to the story before judging.
"I don't know what technique he used, but he killed ten disciples even though they summoned a protective shield of the silver rank. Six of the disciples were all at foundation establishment and four were in the tenth stage of ki condensation."
The room became even quieter. They wanted to know if Tairen was joking. One foundation establishment cultivator at the first step couldn't kill six foundation establishment cultivators even if they were all at the first step.
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"Whatever the technique that killed our students was," Muwadd said. "It gives the man the ability to cast countless lightning bolts. Each bolt contains at least a hundred pol currents. That was how he killed people on a higher level than he is. But the technique didn't reach as far as two hundred meters away from the castle before it dispersed. Tairen didn't know if it just didn't or couldn't. That man was also the only person among the ten that has used it. We don't know if only he can or only he has used it.
"Tairen also didn't detect any treasures within the castle, but I'm almost certainly sure that the man got his secret from the castle. I'll kill him and take it for Tairen once we capture the castle. Perhaps with it, little Tairen can attain core formation. Any objections?"
"Old friend Muwadd, this thing... this treasure is something that can shake the foundation of our sect," said one of the old men. "Don't you think we should perhaps wait and see the extent of it before reaching that decision? You may even break into late core formation with it. Don't you see that you and us, as the leaders of this sect and the guardians of its mountain peaks, need a secret like that more than little Tairen? I'm sure the sect leader will agree."
Tairen couldn't help smiling bitterly. He knew that their preamble to his uncle urging him to accept the treasure for his use was to their interests. He had advised his uncle not to bring up the issue, but he didn't heed. Now they wouldn't even listen to the rest of the story. There was the issue of that silver-masked guy he wanted to discuss with them and also about the dense spirit ki in the castle.
***
Abdin sat cross-legged on the floor. The ki in the training house was thicker than anywhere else in the castle, and mastering any skill there would hasten the time needed to do so in an otherwise different location.
He closed his eyes and kept chanting. Every skill came with its designated chant and a seal. You started by memorizing the seal, and when it reached the necessary level, an image of the seal would appear in your core.
The second step was chanting the said seal. You would go on with the chants until the seal in your core glowed, indicating that the seal and the incantation were now merged.
From then on, the seal would always glow and absorb the necessary pol needed to manifest the particular skill whenever you chanted the incantation.
Abdin, for the past two days, had succeeded in memorizing two seals: one for the serpentine lightning, and the other for the photon jump. He was now at the chanting level.
After three hours of doing the same thing, the two seals glowed. He spread his palm and summoned lightning. The lightning transformed into a rope-like object, then swirled like a serpent. The serpentine creature threw out its head and stared at Abdin with its coal-black eyes.
After a few seconds, it jumped from his palm and crawled just like a real serpent. There were dummies kept for training purposes, and the snake crept to one of them and swaddled it before they both exploded.
The explosion shattered the dummy into pieces, and Abdin grinned as he chanted the second seal.
"Photon jump."
Lightning encased his body. In a second, he reached the other end of the house and returned to stand where he was. It was something that wouldn't be noticed if someone blinked just once.
The lightning snake and the photon jump techniques were now ready.
[Congratulations, you have learned serpentine lightning. Due to the bonus provided by the castle, the skill has been automatically upgraded to A rank.]
[Congratulations, you have learned photon jump. Due to the bonus provided by the castle, the skill has been automatically upgraded to A rank.]
Any skill he learned could be used instantly at any given rank, from A to F. But the cost would differ. An F-rank skill would only take a few days as a cost, at most a week or two. But it was different for a C rank or higher.
At that moment, he heard footsteps approaching. His spiritual sense picked a familiar figure running toward him. It was Laluri.
He turned around frowning. He had spent two days in the training house. Yesterday, Juwaira had told him that an army from Will of San was gathering by the gates. And now came Laluri. Did something happen again?
He had told the slave not to leave her position, that she should wave at him if she saw the masked man trying to make a move. Did she think she would be fine by disobeying a direct command?
As he mused, the young woman turned the corner in haste and approached the house. Abdin walked and stood by the door.