Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 110. Raphael’s Resolve.
Mikaela opened his eyes, having comprehended as much as he could from the three aspects of the Principle of Energy. He understood that without some further training an experience, he would be unable to further his insights into the Principle of Energy through Laien’s aid alone. It was a bit regretful, but he was by no means sad or dissatisfied. He could tell that he had obtained a lot; even some kind of a cluster of golden ashes had shown up in his mind for a bit, but he couldn’t quite make out where it was located and didn’t quite know why he was seeing it. After all, he was yet to actually gain free access to his own soul realm, so it only made sense for it to turn out this way.
“Can I release it now?” he asked mindfully, glancing at the three balls hovering above his hands. The last two times he attempted to stop his training he had been stopped by Laien, so this time around he decided to actually ask instead of getting stopped at the last second for the third time.
“Yeah, go ahead,” Laien said with a smile and withdrew the three aspects of the Principle of Energy, then put his hands down. Mikaela did the same thing with his three balls, then looked him in the eye and smiled, not too sure what he should say to thank him for the help in training. Simple thanks… couldn’t help but feel that it would be somewhat lacking in this situation.
“Do you still have strength to learn a bit more today?” Laien inquired as Mikaela was pondering on how to thank him. The two of them might have been training for merely half an hour, but Laien was very well aware how much mental strength such a training would consume; especially those minutes during which Mikaela had been comprehending the Principle of Energy with his help must have been pretty exhausting to him.
“I can still go on, I think,” Mikaela replied with a smile, feeling a bit weird now that he had missed his chance to say thanks. “I’m feeling a bit lightheaded though,” he added and scratched his head while letting out a quiet chuckle. He wanted to learn more, but he doubted he would be able to concentrate as well as up until this point.
“We will go with something less taxing then,” Laien said and nodded contentedly. There were still a few things he wanted to explain to Mikaela, so he was glad that the boy wasn’t too tired to continue. “To begin with, can you tell me what naming experts in the Ruishi Federation use for the aspects of the Principle of Energy?” he asked, planning to chat with Mikaela for a while before going back to any kind of a training. It would be a good change of pace and it would allow both of them to recover a little.
“It’s just ‘cold’ and ‘hot’ parts or ‘low energy’ and ‘high energy’ parts,” Mikaela began saying hurriedly, looking to be very excited by this subject. “They never even told me about that third one! They probably didn’t even know,” he added, looking at Laien with clear admiration shining in his eyes. The more he thought about it, the more amazing Laien appeared to him.
“Want to hear how I call them?” Laien asked with a laugh, to what Mikaela responded with an eager nod. “The cold and still one I call Negative Energy, the chaotic and hot one, Positive Energy, while the one that’s created through merging those two is what I call Primordial Energy,” he elaborated, more for the sake of making the future references he would make consistent than anything else. However, it was also true that he considered the Ruishian naming sense to be wrong in this case; it wasn’t true that Negative Energy was ‘low on energy’ or that the ‘Positive Energy’ was high on it. The two of them were simply the opposite extremes of an entirely unique type of energy, the Primordial Energy.
“I like your versions better,” Mikaela said and laughed in amusement. “At least they are clear, unlike those stupid things those ‘great teachers’ were telling me about,” he added wryly. He didn’t train with Laien for long, but he would take doing that over any other lessons he could receive without sparing the question a second thought. Truth to be told, he never thought that training could be so fun and enjoyable; if Laien could keep teaching him, then he wouldn’t even mind spending most of each day doing just that and only play in the morning or in the evening!
Hearing Mikaela put his previous teachers down without hesitation, Laien chortled but didn’t deny his words. It was true that whoever had been teaching Mikaela up until this point hadn’t been doing too good of a job. “I felt before that you have insights into two Aspects, primarily Love and then Awareness, am I right?” he asked casually, leaving the subject of the Principle of Energy behind for now.
“You are,” Mikaela confirmed with a smile. “Though they are called ‘Secrets’ here,” he added lightheartedly. He was already planning to switch the way he called those insights to the one used by Laien, but he thought it would be a bit overzealous of him to mention it right away.
“Then, do they teach you about the foundations of the Aspects?” Laien asked once again, trying to get a clear picture of what Mikaela did and didn’t know.
“They don’t,” Mikaela replied and shook his head. “What are those foundations?” he asked, curious to learn more.
“I will explain in a second,” Laien said with a laugh. “You do know what all the fourteen Aspects are though, don’t you?” he inquired playfully. If they didn’t teach even that to the elites of their country, then the Ruishi Federation wouldn’t deserve their reputation as home to one of the strongest elite martial and spiritual masters in the world.
“I do,” Mikaela confirmed quickly. He could even recite all fourteen of them along with their characteristics if Laien wanted him to, but it didn’t seem like such a request would come from him.
“Good,” Laien said contentedly. “Then, what do you know about the Elemental Laws and their Profound Mysteries?” he asked to finish up.
“Eh?” Mikaela frowned a little at first but caught on what Laien meant soon afterwards. “They are called Attributes here. I learned about them from my teachers… and Raphael told me some things about them too, but I never understood them too well,” he elaborated in a somewhat embarrassed manner. He wished he could impress Laien by telling him something he didn’t know about, but it seemed like Laien knew far more than even all those old teachers he had had in the past.
“Hmm?” Laien raised an eyebrow and looked to the side, his gaze stopping at Raphael, who by the looks of it was listening to their talk attentively. “How much do you guys know about the Elemental Laws?” he asked, looking to get a more precise answer from Raphael.
“Hah,” Raphael laughed helplessly, then said while shaking his head. “If you asked me an hour ago, I would have told you that we know a lot about them. But now? I would need to be a fool to claim such a thing with confidence after seeing this much. Either way, I can tell you all I know about them if that’s what you want, but I can’t see how that’s going to be efficient.”
Laien chuckled a little in response to Raphael’s words. Indeed, he might have been getting ahead of himself by asking such a broad question “You’re right, let’s change the approach. Tell me, are you yourself aware that all the three branches of insights are interconnected and share many similarities?” he inquired, directing this question to Raphael, thinking that it was still too soon for Mikaela to have realized something like that. As for the possibility of their teachers telling them that… he saw that as an even more unlikely variable. Still, given how Raphael’s eyes seemed to lit up after he asked him this question, something interesting was definitely up.
“I’ve had this feeling for quite a while now,” Raphael said so excitedly that for a second, his attitude started looking similar to Mikaela’s when he was being taught by Laien. “I didn’t really speak about it to anyone and I didn’t really ponder it too much… but it’s just like you are saying. Be it the Secrets… or the Aspects, as you call them, and the Principles and the Atr… well, the Profound Mysteries, right? They all share certain similarities. I didn’t really talk about it with Mika since he only had insights into the Aspects before today,” he explained, at this point looking forward to talking with and learning more from Laien perhaps just about as much as Mikaela.
“Yeah,” Laien said with a nod and glanced at Mikaela out of the corner of his eye. Having confirmed that the boy was listening while looking as if he wouldn’t forgive himself for missing even one word from this conversation, he suppressed a laugh and returned his gaze to Raphael. “The Aspects of Humanity, the Principles of the World, the Elemental Laws; they are all different and yet, they are very similar. Some of the Aspects and Profound Mysteries are even connected so closely that just gaining a high enough degree of insights into one will allow you to understand its equivalent part without even knowing,” he mentioned with a smile, then laughed a little when the dignified-looking Raphael nodded eagerly a few times in a row, acting exactly like Mikaela.
“With that being said,” Laien said and turned to look at Mikaela. “Are you up for a lecture about the Profound Mysteries of the Water Element?” he asked, wondering if Mikaela would display a similarly positive attitude when the subject changed from ‘training’ to ‘learning’.
“Yeah!” However, it appeared that his worries were needless as Mikaela replied with just as much eagerness as before.
Chuckling, Laien proceeded to explain about his various insights into the Profound Mysteries of Water. There were five water-element Mysteries of which he was aware of; the Profound Mystery of the Tranquil Sea, of the Storm, of the Mist, of the Shifting Currents and finally, of the Maelstrom. He didn’t hesitate to speak about the first four of them, but he wasn’t sure if he should mention the fifth one. In the end, however, he decided not to keep it a secret and spoke plainly. He had already taught Mikaela so much; he knew that Raphael had gained some precious insights too, thanks to Yin who had seen Raphael suddenly enter a deep meditative trance, so he didn’t see a reason to hold back when he had gone this far with sharing his knowledge already.
The following half an hour passed before any of them noticed. The subject of Elemental Laws was a broad one, so there was no lack of things to talk about, while Mikaela and Raphael didn’t hold back on asking their own questions and additionally, in Raphael’s case, in providing his own thoughts At one point Yin had also joined in, and so did Arslan, though he didn’t speak all that much. As a result, their little group of five ended up sitting in one circle somewhere along the way, seeing as it would be more convenient since all of them were now engaged in one big discussion.
At one point during the chat of theirs, someone knocked on the door and after about two or three seconds entered the training room.
“Everything’s been dealt with,” Elder Samuel informed with a rather tired, but at the same time pretty satisfied look on his face. “The Grand Council also has officially given us permission to go through with our plans, so all that’s left is for me to finish writing up the deal. As originally intended, I will come over to you in the evening, young master Arslan,” he said contentedly. He might have expected the rest of the council to go along with his requests, but to have it actually happen relieved him of quite some mental burden. The fact that no one questioned the validity of his story about Elder Sophie had been a pleasant surprise to him too, though he likely needed to thank Elder Simon for that one as the old man immediately backed him up and caused the hesitant atmosphere to change in his favor, resulting in the meeting ending as it did.
Ten votes were needed to change an already established verdict. After having the three Grand Elders of Elder Sophie’s faction, including herself, retire, the new decision was made unanimously. The news of Elder Sophie’s attempted treason had also been properly suppressed; it would require some unplanned work in the span of the next few months, but as long as nothing unexpected happened, the remaining factions that stood in opposition to him within the country would be completely dealt with and left with no real influence on the grand scheme of things.
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“I’m glad it ended well,” Arslan said happily. The matter of having the Ruishi Federation help with his grand scheme was of utmost importance to him, so he was genuinely relieved that the affair with Elder Sophie ended without destroying or negatively influencing his deal with Elder Samuel.
“I am too,” Elder Samuel said with a slight smile, then turned his gaze towards Laien and Yin. “I didn’t bring it up earlier since I was in a hurry to deal with the problem at hand, but now we do have time. I do believe that I owe all of you a proper compensation for what happened. No matter how it ended, the fact that I allowed you to be attacked while you were supposed to be under my protection stands,” he declared straightforwardly, seeing no reason not to act according to his own conscience this time around. It would serve to better his relationship with those three, after all. It would be good both for his conscience and for his country, so it was perfect as far as he was concerned.
“As for Mikaela and Raphael,” he added mindfully. “We will discuss your compensation on another occasion. And as for you three, feel free to request anything within the boundaries of reason,” he proposed, trusting that Arslan, Laien, and Yin would be able to tell what kind of requests were appropriate to make in this situation and which would be too much to consider being viable.
“Hoh,” Laien chuckled quietly and exchanged a glance with Yin, what for one reason or another caused Elder Samuel to shiver just a little. Those two, what in the world were they thinking about for his instincts to react this way? To be honest, though, he had a feeling he didn’t want to know.
“I think I know what we’re going to do,” Laien said playfully. “The same thing you wanted to request of Yin and me during the negotiations is what we want from you. Is that within the boundaries of reason?” he inquired, giving up on teasing Elder Samuel by bringing up any Mikaela-related requests.
“That’s fine,” Elder Samuel said with a laugh. The request wasn’t an excessive one, so he wouldn’t mind owing each of those two a favor.
“Then,” Arslan spoke up. “I will settle for the same thing too,” he said lightheartedly and smiled when Elder Samuel nodded in confirmation.
“If you guys need anything, just tell me,” Elder Samuel offered generously. “Training space, food, wine, anything reasonable. Just please don’t ask me to give you our best cultivation methods or precious tomes for reference,” he said half-jokingly, but he didn’t expect to see all the five youths to exchange amused glanced and start chuckling and laughing. Did he say something so funny? Or had he finally grown too old to understand the sense of humor of the young generations?
“Thanks for an offer,” Laien said with a very much amused look on his face. “I think we will stay here for a bit longer and then go back to outskirts of the Grand Camp,” he said and glanced around, looking to see if anyone had different ideas. As it soon was proven though, the others were of the same mind; they all wanted to stay here for some more time to chat and exchange ideas about their insights and other cultivation-related subjects.
“Okay, I understand,” Elder Samuel said and suppressed a sigh. It was almost wondrous how easily kids could establish new relationships; it’s only been a little bit of time, but those five already looked like a group of good friends. If it was the same for adults, then this world would be a much more beautiful place… though pragmatically speaking, there would always be someone who would abuse this kind of trust, so all of such thinking was in the realm of idealistic dreams.
Either way, after giving the five youths one more look, Elder Samuel turned around and left, closing the door behind himself.
“Whew,” Laien breathed out and chuckled a little. “Where were we again?” he asked, having gotten a bit distracted by Elder Samuel.
Raphael laughed quietly and gave Laien a resigned smile. “You just told us to try and study Profound Mysteries of many elements, if we can, and apply them to our own insights,” he reminded, wondering how Laien could have forgotten saying something so outrageous. Had he heard it from someone else than Laien, and maybe Yin since he also appeared to know all such things, he would have written it off as being a bad joke. However, he didn’t think that those two would be making fun of him; well, at least not on the subjects of training and insights.
“Ah, right, we were finishing up,” Laien said merrily and exchanged a look first with Raphael, then with Mikaela. The two appeared to be curious enough by now, so he didn’t delay and continued where they left the moment Elder Samuel knocked on the door. “We could really discuss the theory behind all those insights for hours upon hours, so let’s just be satisfied with the most important things for now. I think there are only a few essential points, so let me try and sum them up,” he proposed with a smile and seeing that Mikaela and Raphael didn’t have any objections, he went ahead and did as he said he would.
“First, the Principles since we started from them anyway. We already told you it’s really bad to try and learn ‘how a Principle works’ before actually gaining some insights into it, so that’s dealt with.”
“The subject of manipulating your own element through the Principle of Energy is just a try-and-see thing, so we can leave that for when we spar or train.”
“We talked quite a bit about the Elemental Laws and their Profound Mysteries, so is there really anything to add? Well, we will see later on.”
“So, all that’s left are the Aspects,” he said and paused for a bit with a playful smile on his face. “I already mentioned the foundations before, right? I’m pretty sure you should know what I meant,” he said while glancing at Raphael. It would be unheard of for a spiritual practitioner as talented as him, who was also just a step away from becoming a spiritual master, to not have tried to explore his own soul at any point in time. And if Raphael did enter his own Soul Realm, then he must have seen the omnicolored orbs of light, of the essence of the Aspects, within the very central part of his soul.
“I do,” Raphael confirmed a bit helplessly, then laughed inwardly when he saw Mikaela look at him poutingly and a little grudgingly. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention it to you before, but you would have tried to enter your Soul Realm to check even if I told you not to, wouldn’t you? It’s still a bit too early for you to try that; you would have only injured yourself by forcing it,” he explained apologetically, hoping that Mikaela wouldn’t sulk too much after hearing him say so.
“Hmph.” As for Mikaela himself, although he ended up sulking for a bit since he wasn’t too happy to hear this kind of an explanation, he did let out a sigh a moment later and smiled helplessly. He needed to admit that Raphael was right; he really would have tried seeing what this whole Soul Realm was. Even now he was curious to check, but after being confronted in this way, he had no other choice but to resist the curiosity.
“So,” Laien picked up the subject again. “Can you tell me which Aspects you can use?” he inquired, obviously directing the question towards Raphael.
“Fine,” Raphael agreed without as much as asking if Laien and Yin would reveal their own Aspects later on. He had been unable to find a good time to bring it up, but he still wanted to tell Laien how much he improved in the Principle of Energy thanks to watching him train with Mikaela. Additionally, given how unhesitatingly Laien and Yin were sharing their own knowledge with them, he wouldn’t be able to stomach the idea of hiding his own skills from them.
“I have insights into five Aspects in total,” he began saying, having already switched to the naming that Laien and Yin were using. “From the ones that are the strongest, it would be Awareness, Pride and Tranquility, and lastly, Love and Desire. The first three should have half-complete foundations while the last two are just clusters of light,”
“Hm,” Laien nodded with a calm smile. “So you also know five Aspects, just like Luca. You are better off though since none of his have any foundations,” he said with a laugh, causing Raphael to raise his eyebrows slightly in surprise, only for him to recall that Laien had fought against Luca before. It would only make sense for him to have figures out the number of Aspects Luca wielded, though discerning them by their names would surely be quite a bit harder.
“Still…” Laien continued and shook his head a little. “You are our age, but you are like a caged tiger,” he said carefreely, using this particular comparison because Raphael’s long, golden hair reminded him the tigers.
However, just those simple words shook Raphael greatly as they were the exact same thing he had thought about himself after seeing Laien fight; that he was merely a caged tiger, while Laien was a soaring dragon. As such, he couldn’t help but ask. “Then you two, which Aspects did you master?”
Laien and Yin exchanged a bewildered glance. They had expected Raphael to be at least a bit distressed after being bluntly called a ‘caged tiger’, but the only thing that showed on his face and in his eyes was determination and resolve. Raphael might have spent his whole life in the Ruishi Federation, but from the mental perspective, he really was quite mature.
“I know five,” Laien said after a few seconds. “Three of them have full foundations; Tranquility, Wrath, Awareness. Two have half-complete foundations; Compassion and Humility,” he revealed casually, though with a fair degree of pride hidden behind the leisure tone of his words.
“It’s six for me,” Yin said right afterwards and chuckled a little. “The full ones are Pride, Humility, and Awareness. The half ones are Compassion and Tranquility, while the cluster one is Desire,” he specified in a completely lighthearted tone, dealing the second and final blow to Raphael’s ability to remain cool-headed.
Despite being prepared to hear answers that would deal blows to his self-confidence, Raphael groaned inwardly and showed a weird look on his face. Since he experienced the difference between the strength of the Aspects which had no foundation and those which had half-complete ones, he could imagine how big of an abyss separated his insights into the Aspects from those of Laien’s and Yin’s. He refused to believe that his innate potential was any worse than theirs or that he was putting in less effort while training than them; thus, there was only one explanation left. He didn’t have nearly enough real-life experience; he was akin to a tiger whose claws were growing dull as he was being kept in perpetual safety.
“How did you learn so many of them?” Yet, to the contrary of Raphael’s slightly depressed state, Mikaela was nothing but impressed as he asked his question.
“How you ask,” Laien said with a laugh and once again, exchanged a look with Yin. It would take them a long time to explain more about the Aspects, so instead, he answered briefly, “Some from fighting desperately against strong opponents, some from realizing various things about ourselves during our journey to the north… other from learning and accepting our own deficiencies, the areas we lack in.”
“Hooh,” Mikaela nodded, but to be entirely honest, he didn’t quite understand what Laien was speaking about. He didn’t even know when he had learned the two Aspects he knew, so he had trouble relating to this vague explanation. He did understand one thing though; that the best way to become stronger is to go out and learn more about the world and to adventure it!
“So it all comes down to experience,” Raphael said with a weak smile. However, he soon laughed and shook his head before raising his glance and looking straight at Laien and Yin. “I’ve learned much from you guys, but I can’t think of anything I could offer you in return,” he said with a helpless smile, then turned his attention to Laien and continued. “I even made a great breakthrough in my Principle of Energy thanks to watching your training with Mika… I don’t feel good asking that when I’m the one indebted to you, but please fight against me. I don’t want a spar, but a true fight. Please,” he said very seriously and lowered his head, closed his eyes and waited impatiently for an answer to come.
He wouldn’t have acted like that normally, but he had a feeling that if he didn’t challenge Laien right here and right now, if he didn’t use this opportunity to propel himself forward, then he would forever be destined to lag behind him. He had great ambitions of his own and always saw himself as someone who pursued the very peak of cultivation, so this kind of gut feeling was almost unbearable to him. He had already wasted so much time…! If he didn’t start right away, then he would never catch up to those who were running forward at full speed!
“To begin with, you don’t owe me anything,” Laien said with a carefree laugh. “Aren’t we friends? Who would speak of debts between friends? If I wanted something in return for telling you about those things, I would have said so in the beginning,” he said lightheartedly. He could tell that both Mikaela and Raphael were good people at heart and he liked them a lot too; as such, he felt no particular need to refrain from sharing with them whatever insights he had. Perhaps one day they would obtain something new and then show it to him too? Still, even if no such thing happened, he would be satisfied enough if he could get along well with the two of them in the future.
“As for that serious fight,” he picked up, seeing as Raphael wasn’t raising his head for some reason. “I’m up for that, but it will only work out if your strength is similar to mine, you know? So I can’t promise anything,” he said with a laugh, albeit without bothering to hide the competitive and eager side to the tone of his voice. Raphael was strong, he could tell this much! As for whether Raphael’s strength was comparable to his own, that was yet to be proven.
“… Thank you,” Raphael finally raised his head and said with a warm, genuine smile, one which startled Laien a little. He chuckled inwardly, the looked at Yin who simply shrugged his shoulders and smiled meaningfully. “It really happened like he said it would, heh. There’s no need to repay favors between friends, huh… I don’t dislike such thinking, as pure and naïve as it is,” he thought quietly and at the same time, promised himself to help Laien out if he ever needed help.