Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 13. The Blood of Ishtar.

“It’s not nearly as powerful as the Twin Phoenix art, but still,” Laien mused silently as he watched the rust-colored flame around Lucin’s sword. He released a little bit of his spiritual energy, covering his spear with a layer of water and just like before, deflected Lucin’s sword to the side.

The rust-colored flame hissed as it clashed against the layer of water, but even the simple magic proved to be enough to contain it. Even though no insights were applied to the simple spell, Laien was a spiritual practitioner of the seventh rank after all.

Not discouraged, Lucin raised his Qi further and further, all the way to the utmost limit. “Lucin, don’t!” The agitated cry of his father sounded in his ears, but he ignored it and slashed sideways, sending both his sword and the surge of flames at Laien.

“Yes, just like that,” Laien smiled, his body reacting as if on its own. He stood his ground and didn’t retreat; what’s more, instead of trying to defend in a normal fashion, he swirled his spear lightly and smoothly, sending its back end against Lucin’s sword as he began rotating his body. “Don’t block, simply catch the attack and send it somewhere else,” he thought contentedly as he successfully executed the Water Flow technique and nullified the relatively powerful attack with minimal effort. The steel didn’t reach him and the surge of flames hit the ground; it was a perfect outcome.

Without pausing, as he turned his body Laien took three quick steps and pivoted lightly on his left foot before coming to halt, then smiled a little.

Off-balance, Lucin had no time to put his guard up and had no other choice but to freeze when the blade of the spear stopped centimeters away from his neck. The Iron Skin art had good defensive properties, but its strongest aspect was enhanced endurance and the monstrous amount of Qi it offered to its wielders. It was extremely suited for prolonged fights and despite being merely a high-level martial art could be considered comparable to some top-level ones, but despite that blocking a slash at the neck from someone of equal strength was beyond its capacities.

“I lost,” Lucin said quite loudly. Before the spectators had the chance to comprehend what they had just seen, he put his sword away and calmed his Qi down. “Thank you for your guidance,” he said calmly, bowed slightly and clasped a fist and a hand in a typical military gesture. He had had his suspicions since the beginning of this spar, but after that last exchange he was thoroughly convinced that Laien was hiding his true abilities. He was at least skilled enough to be able to tell when he wasn’t a match for his opponent.

Laien laughed weakly, pleasantly surprised by the lack of haughtiness and empty pride in Lucin’s behavior. He lowered his spear and scratched the back of his head with his left hand, not entirely sure what he should say. Lucin seemed to be an amiable fellow so he didn’t want to embarrass him or anything, but it would be strange to befriend him when he and Yin wouldn’t be spending a long time in the Iron Fort. It would be somewhat awkward.

“Never thought I would be beaten by a mainlander who’s my age,” Lucin said with a laugh, seeing that Laien appeared to be a bit troubled. “I hope we can fight again,” he said amiably and reached out with his hand. He felt that he could improve a lot if he were to keep sparring with Laien on a regular basis. It was quite rare for him to encounter somebody whose pure technique was so much better than his own it could be referred to as ‘on an entirely different level’.

“We are in the middle of a journey, so we probably won’t get another chance to fight,” Laien mentioned while shaking Lucin’s hand.

“Is that so. What a pity,” Lucin said with a sigh, then nodded respectfully and headed back to the terrace. He glanced at his father reluctantly, wondering if he won’t be angry at him for losing so easily. However, for the time being, it still looked like his father hadn’t come back to his senses after witnessing that abrupt ending to the duel; just like most of the spectators, he was having trouble believing what he had seen.

“So, who is next?” Laien called out with a cheeky smile, doing so in an almost habitual manner. He had often sparred against the disciples of the Red Dragon School in a similar fashion, so he was very much used to having one fight after another.

“How about me?” a young man, perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old responded and stepped forward.

“No,” Tares disagreed almost immediately, even though the young man’s question was intended as a rhetorical one. “Lars, you go and spar with the boy,” he pretty much ordered, glancing at the long-haired man. He really wanted to see how Lars would fare against Laien.

“Lieutenant, you want to make a martial master fight a kid?” the sturdy-faced man asked in disbelief. Lars was a martial master of the first rank! To make him go and fight a twelve-year-old only to assure the victory of their side… it was an incredibly shallow, if not an outright cowardly act!

“If you think anyone else can fight the scion of the Red Dragon School, then go ahead and point that person out,” Tares said resignedly, startling the few dozen people around him quite badly. It took the sturdy-faced man and everyone else a few seconds to chew on Tares’s words and mince them in their mouths before they came to an understanding.

“You mean he is the Laien? The same one who…” Lucin exclaimed in shock and turned around to look at Laien again, then quickly moved his gaze onto Yin. “Then those two… are the rumored prodigies of the Grand Tournament?” he asked aloud, recalling everything he had heard about that duel. Before today he had considered that news to be exaggerated…. but after exchanging blows with Laien, he was beginning to believe their validity.

Yet, if this Laien was really the Laien, then the amount of strength he had been holding back while fighting him was enormous! Even for someone not as prideful as him, it was a bitter pill to swallow. From the look of it, no matter how high one stood, there would always be somebody above him.

“He turns out to be a nicer guy that I thought,” Teira said with a merry laugh. “I thought he was just a random noble, but he is actually one of the three kids our age the whole Iron Fort was taking about two days ago,” he pointed out, approaching the situation with much cooler than most adults around him. The chat he had with Laien and Yin might have been brief, but it thoroughly convinced him the boys weren’t any haughty young masters or delusional mainlanders. The two and that other one from the Twin Phoenix School, they were the ones he could confidently look up to!

Laien laughed to himself, mildly amused by the reactions of those few dozen people who had just come to a realization about his and Yin’s identities.

The long-haired Lars looked at his nephew, then shook his head and laughed helplessly. “To think none of us connected those two names with the Grand Tournament when we heard them, and to think I would have the opportunity to fight against one of the hailed prodigies of our Kingdom. What a lucky day!” he declared loudly and laughed again, then withdrew a sword from his interspatial ring and headed towards Laien.

“Let’s have a good fight!” he said with a broad smile, not bothering to hide how excited he was. He had been baffled by his son’s sudden loss, but now everything made sense. His friend who had gone to watch the Grand Tournament described the duels to him in detail, so truth to be told he himself wasn’t all that confident in being able to beat Laien. If the boy used the same powerful spell he had used back then… then he would have no way to defend himself.

“Yeah, let’s have a good fight,” Laien said with a laugh. He had heard what those people were saying, so he didn’t even need to probe the man with his spiritual sense to know he was a martial master. He knew that this time around he wouldn’t have the luxury of being as leisure, so he immediately controlled his spiritual energy and brought forth a large amount of water which flowed slowly over the length of his spear. He filled the magic with his insights into the Aspects, enhancing it with the mixture of Tranquility, Wrath and Awareness.

The pressure which spread from Laien caused the present martial masters and those talented practitioners of the mortal realm who awakened their battle sense early to open their eyes wide. The feeling they got from Laien was by no means short of the pressure released by a martial master of the first rank, what was only further confirmed when Lars roused his Qi. The two seemed to be just about equal if only the pressure of their spiritual energy and Qi were to be considered.

“Formidable,” Lars said in recognition. “I’m coming at you with everything I have, you ready?” he asked and brandished his sword, displaying the power of his flames.

“Come whenever,” Laien said calmly, waiting for Lars to attack after having assumed a defensive stance. He didn’t need to wait long as right after he said that, Lars attacked him and just like he said, held back nothing at all. “Just like the flow of water, like an eternally tranquil sea,” Laien thought calmly as he prepared to intercept the first slash of the sword. Then, just like he intended to do he grasped the attack in motion and redirected it slightly to the side, rendering it completely pointless.

“Eh?” Lars frowned, for the first time faced with such a peculiar feeling. He had fought with a few spear wielders before, but he never experienced the sensation of his attack… not even being blocked or deflected, but being sucked in and spewed out without him being able to do anything about it. “Is it because I used too much strength?” he immediately considered the possibility and quickly switched to a lighter, softer style and attacked Laien a few dozen times in a short period of time.

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Yet, as he soon found out that the change in approach made little difference. The feeling of his attacks being sucked in and spewed out was no longer there, but it instead transformed into something perhaps scarier than that. He was trying to pressure Laien, to put him in a bad spot… but no matter what he did, he felt as if he was a kid attacking a lake with a random wooden stick he picked up on the road. He couldn’t force his way in, he couldn’t disrupt this strange tempo even by mixing in some unnaturally forceful, strength-reliant attacks. He could do anything at all and to make matters worse, he was steadily losing ground!

“What is this ridiculous spear technique?” Tares spoke while shaking his head, his voice once again filling with disbelief. “His spiritual energy is somehow comparable to Qi of a martial master of the first rank, but for Lars to be so helpless against a kid…” he commented with a weak laugh, the desire to have a go against Laien springing to life in his heart and burning in his eyes.

“Even father can’t beat him,” Lucin stated with an amazed smile. He now found it quite funny that he had been worried about his father being angry with him for losing to Laien; by the looks of it even his father would share the same fate! “I wouldn’t have held for one exchange if he went all-out from the very beginning,” he noted to himself with a weak smirk.

“The blood of Ishtar,” Teira said with a sigh of awe and respect. There was this old legend amongst the followers of Ishtar; it said Ishtar himself would descend upon the world and share a drop of his blood with the young children of great potential.

“The blood of Ishtar,” Lucin agreed with a nod, after what many of those gathered repeated the words; some quietly, some loudly; yet, all with the same conviction. A twelve-year-old boy who could not only rival, but beat a martial master? Who could he be but the scion of Ishtar?

Tares on the other hand, unlike everyone else, couldn’t help but worry. The times in the Iron Fort were dangerous, the higher echelons knew something bad was very close to happening. The significance of a new God’s Blood appearing could under no circumstance be understated; it needed to be understood that not even the General Agnes himself was recognized as someone carrying the blood of Ishtar! If the majority of the Iron Knights recognized that kid, or to make matters worse two kids as ones blessed by the God’s Blood… they would automatically gain authority comparable with the General’s! Even if their word wouldn’t mean as much while they were still young, in four more years after their coming of age ceremony…

Some people, if not to dare to name the General himself, might not welcome a development of this kind with open arms.

“If nothing happens to those kids, they will wield an unimaginable authority within the Kingdom in the future,” Tares thought with a sigh. The one who controlled the military was the one who ruled the country! From what he knew those two boys and their third friend had two Great Martial Schools behind their backs. If they were to also receive the support of the border armies and the various Generals… there would be barely anyone who could oppose them in the Sarkcente Kingdom. In fact, if all their supporters were ready to take up arms for their sake, even the King himself would be unable to refuse their requests… or their demands.

Lars’s face twitched when after one of his own attacks, Laien’s spear came flying swiftly and cut a small wound at his shoulder. He wanted to make use of the opportunity to counterattack… but he found himself missing completely; and to make matters worse, he didn’t understand how he missed. Before he could fix his stance, the spear swished again and this time made a fairly dangerous wound in his side; were it not for the Iron Skin art, the fight would have likely ended right there.

“Fine!” he called out and jumped a few meters back, giving up on trying to gain victory with his sword art. “If you can take that, you win!” he declared and raised his sword just above his head, pointing it straight at Laien’s chest. He poured ridiculous amounts of Qi onto the blade, to the point he barely could control the blaze and had even his own hair and clothes scorched by it.

“Go ahead,” Laien said with a smile and assumed the same defensive stance as he did originally. Lars furrowed his eyebrows at this sight, but he didn’t think twice and jumped forward and thrust his sword. He knew full well an attack of this manner was akin to a suicide against a skilled spear wielder, but he truly had no other means of achieving a victory. He simply wasn’t a match for Laien’s impregnable defense with his endurance-focused martial art at the level of his skill with the sword.

“He’s fast,” the thought crossed Laien’s mind. “I wish I was as fast as Yin. I could easily dodge to the side and impale him on my spear then,” he mused in vague thoughts, his spear already swirling in his hands. Once again, though this time assisting himself with a considerably larger amount of spiritual energy he met the attack with the back end of the spear, sending the sword and the flames off their original course. He then quickly completed the spin of his spear twice and that of his body once, then had his spear clash against Lars’s hastily put up guard.

The force of the blow and the lack of balance after the all-out attack led Lars to lose balance and be sent off the ground, only to land in a rather unsightly manner a few meters away, albeit still on his own feet and not on his ass. He managed to keep the last remaining bits of his dignity, but didn’t escape without another injury; the blade of Laien’s spear slashed him across the arm and the shoulder, rendering his left hand mostly useless were he to try and continue to fight.

“You win, I lose,” Lars said with a weak groan. It’s been quite some time since he had last been wounded so badly; it would take him at least a week to fully recover. “To think I was beaten by a kid who is my son’s age. Truly, you must have been blessed by the blood of Ishtar,” he added somewhat jokingly as he had never been the most religious person around, but when he noticed the nods of approval from those who were spectating and heard them voicing an open support for this statement he couldn’t not be slightly startled.

“Good Gods,” he uttered silently, realizing how the Iron Knights would unhesitatingly come to adore this boy were they to see his strength with their own eyes. The cast of the warriors… they always were a rather eccentric, fanatical and strongly patriotic bunch. Most of the soldiers in the Iron Fort were simple-minded people; Laien both had a character they would find likable and was blessed with incredible talent and strength. They would follow him without hesitation if the need arose.

“So is it my turn yet?” Yin asked with a laugh, guessing that if he were not to say anything then Laien would be ready to fight all the following challengers for the rest of the night; or at least until he was left utterly exhausted.

“It’s only fair if it is, eh?” Laien asked with a smile and withdrew his spear back into the interspatial ring. He headed to the terrace right after Lars, who was already walking up to his sturdy-faced friend to receive some first aid and get bandaged.

“We fight after you are done, right?” Laien stopped briefly and asked as he and Yin were passing by each other.

“Yup,” Yin confirmed, then chuckled when he saw Laien raise his hand. He tapped it with his own and went to the center of the training field, turned around and glanced at the present bunch with anticipation.

“Father, go. I will tend to uncle,” Teira said with a smile and reached out with his hand to take the bandages away from his father.

“Everyone can tell you are dying to have a go at him, Tam. Don’t hold yourself back,” Lars said with a laugh, then winced in pain when the wounds over his body began hurting more because of it.

“Ha,” Tam smirked and allowed his son to finish taking care of his friend. “Admit it, all you want is to see me beaten up just as badly so I can’t make fun of you,” he pointed out and chortled when Lars gave him a helpless, but at the same time wry look.

“Good, good.” Tam boomed with laughter as he headed towards Yin. “Show me what you have, boy,” he said and took his sword out, roused his Qi and released the rust-colored flames.

“He’s also a martial master of the first rank,” Yin noted quietly and took out his twin swords, then ran his lightning-element Qi through their blades. “Fighting powerful area-of-effect techniques is always such a pain, but the martial art those people are using doesn’t seem to be capable of that,” he mused, choosing the way he wanted to deal with his opponent. “Well, I don’t think he can surprise me like Laien did, so I will just fight as always,” he decided and kicked the ground, closing the ten meters between him and Tam so fast the man barely had time to react.

“What is this speed?” Tares gasped when he saw Yin pouring dozens of attacks upon Tam at such a pace the man had no time to counterattack at all. All he could do was to defend, his hands and arms growing increasingly numb with each surge of lightning passing through them, his flames remaining relatively useless as he couldn’t even put them in motion to send them forth. Steadily but surely, more and more cuts appeared all over his body; each next one a bit deeper than the previous.

Laien smirked, pleased by the shocked expressions on everyone’s faces. “Wait for him to use any of his insights, then you will be really shocked,” he thought with a wide smile, but wondered if there was anyone but for the elites of the Iron Fort who could force Yin to go all out.

His and Yin’s abilities were heavily refined towards dueling and their skills were very much suited for that purpose too. The Iron Knights, however, were soldiers; their martial art was the epitome of what you would want from a huge army of regular warriors. In a one on one fight, however… they fell short of the specialists like the two of them.

“I concede, I concede!” Tam called out with a helpless smile, the amount and seriousness of his injuries increasing with each exchange of blows. He wouldn’t be stupidly stubborn and fight until his legs held; he realized he was no match for Yin so he preferred to spare himself any heavy injuries.

“So… who is next?” Yin asked with a chuckle, then exchanged a glance with Laien and laughed again. It really was quite fun to be doing that, showing-off that is.

“Beat me,” Tares said in a low, but loud voice. “Those guys here call you the blood of Ishtar, the ones blessed by the God’s Blood! Beat me and I will also be convinced so,” he said challengingly, confident he would be able to suppress either of the two boys.

At one hand he wished to prevent any instability in the Iron Fort, but on the other, he wanted to see for himself what were those two with the blood of Ishtar worth. Both Lars and Tam were fairly fresh martial masters, but he had over a hundred years of experience. His cultivation might have come to a halt at the peak of the third Realm of Heroes… but he was confident his strength was above that level. If either Yin or Laien would be able to fight with him on equal ground… he wouldn’t mind throwing his support behind them as the scions of Ishtar, the ones carrying the God of War’s blood.

“Ho,” Yin smiled, watching as Tares approached him from the terrace with what appeared to be a longsword in hand. “His aura sure is different from those two martial masters Laien and I fought. He seems strong… he’s going to be a good challenge to beat,” he thought eagerly and took a deep breath, then breathed out slowly.

He focused his eyes on Tares, then roused his Qi and released is lightning, the sparks dancing through his twin swords and all over his body. This time he held nothing back, enhancing his Qi with the power of four Aspects; Pride, Humility, Awareness and Desire… and with the essence of the Principle of Energy, with the pure Primordial Energy.

The sudden increase in power was apparent to anyone watching; just seeing the lighting covering Yin’s body and swords filled their hearts with fear. This kind of strength… it didn’t belong to a child twelve of age. Only someone blessed by their God could possibly be so powerful!

“He-he was holding back too?” the startled thought crossed Tares’s mind as Yin’s aura spiked many times over. He swallowed nervously, beginning to wonder if going forward to duel Yin really was such a good idea.