Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 146. The Trial of Heart, Complete.
“Twice the resources for ten years or not,” the young, black-masked Shade complained with a sigh. “Isn’t it too much? We’re just going to get those two killed,” he said helplessly. Still, he was aware that his old master likely wasn’t even listening to him. It’s been the whole night already, but the old man was still entranced with that emerald lightning the green-haired kid, Yin, had displayed yesterday evening. Trying to reason with him when he was in that obsessive state… was virtually pointless. It looked like those two unlucky geniuses were doomed to be played to death by his master, just like the hundreds of paste geniuses who died under his tests and games.
“If they die, they die.” To the young Shade’s surprise, his old master actually responded to him. “I’ve told all of you many times, to reach the apex you need not only talent but the necessary luck! In other words, destiny! Those two have it, I’m almost certain. However, if I’m wrong, then they are going to die. It can’t be helped,” the old man added plainly. He had refrained from personally spying on the two boys during their stay in the Ruishi Federation and now that he had seen the progress they had made in such a short period of time, he needed to admit that he was surprised.
Yet, if those boys lacked the necessary destiny, then even if he didn’t put them through his trials now, they would soon die sometime in the future.
“Are we really going to only watch?” the young Shade asked, sounding rather displeased. Even if those two kids didn’t have the destiny his old teacher liked to speak about, they could be raised into powerful experts regardless of that. Instead of wasting their lives through those overly dangerous trials, wouldn’t it be better to groom them and raise them to be useful subordinates? There weren’t many people in the world who piqued his interest, but if it were those two, then he would be willing to spend a large portion of his wealth and time to raise them into useful experts.
“We will only watch,” the old man said in a clear voice, which however carried an ever so slight hint of threat within it. “I too think it would be a pity if they died, but that’s just it. If they prove to be mere cats instead of tiger cubs, then it’s better if I don’t waste my time on them,” he said, though once again his voice carried an opposite hint to what he was literally saying.
This time, that hint was of hopefulness; as cold as the old man acted, he couldn’t deny that he had become fond of those two boys. Had their characters been closer to Altair’s, he would have been far more hesitant about putting them through such a lethal danger. But, as far as he was more than satisfied with the boys’ strength, the Trial of Heart and the Trial of Will weren’t about one’s strength. For someone as soft as those two boys, for someone who wanted to try and carry innumerable burdens throughout his life, only a sufficiently strong destiny could save such a person from self-destructing under the overbearing weight that he insisted on putting on top of his shoulders.
“Maian,” the old man spoke a name after a few seconds, startling the young Shade heavily. His master hadn’t called him by his name in almost half a century! Was this old man, in truth, more worried about those two boys than he was willing to show to him? “Those two can already be considered to have passed my Trial of Heart. Whatever convictions they have, they are steadfast in following them even in the face of great danger. They already passed Altair’s Trial of Strength… so only the third Trial is left,” the old man said, his voice sounding unnaturally emotionless and calm.
“Teacher,” Maian began saying with suspicion. “Are you thinking of saving them from danger as soon as they’ve passed the third Trial?” he asked with some disbelief. The only person towards whom his old master had ever acted with a favorable bias towards was Altair. If the old man was even considering doing the same and breaking the rules of his own game for those two boys, then he really needed to be far more interested in them than he had given him credit to.
“Just thinking about it,” the old man admitted. “But I won’t. Mental growth through trials is one thing, but did I ever tell you about accumulating destiny?” he mentioned, then without waiting for Maian to respond, continued. “Even if you are incredibly talented, if you stay in one place and only keep training and sparring safely with elites, then you will sooner or later hit the wall and your potential will exhaust itself. Only by constantly experiencing new dangers and challenges can one propel himself forward. The harder the trials, the more destiny the person accumulates,” he explained, his voice carrying a rare hint of genuine desire, a desire to grow stronger than he already was.
“It seems….” Maian began saying but bit his tongue. At first, he felt like arguing this subject with his old master, but then a strange question came to his mind. Could it be that his master experienced something similar himself and that was why despite possessing power and knowledge beyond his understanding, he was still staying here, in this place he sometimes called a ‘lower realm’?
“Strange? Unrealistic?” the old man asked and finally, laughed in his usual way. “Saving someone is fine, but only if the challenge is so far beyond him that it can’t be tackled in any way. In all other circumstances, you shave off the person’s destiny and limit his future,” he said with a melancholic smile, which, however, was entirely hidden by the black mask he was wearing on his face.
“It’s not that.” Maian suppressed a sigh. “I do find this concept to be somewhat hard to grasp, but you aren’t a person to lie, teacher. You might twist the truths and conceal some facts, but you do not lie,” he said rather daringly, then secretly breathed with relief when the old man laughed at his remark without getting angry with him.
“Let’s see what happens,” the old man said cheerfully. “When they can’t solve something with strength or with an argument, how will those two act, I wonder?” he asked out loud, then waved his hand slightly and continued running forwards, his figure hidden within the shadows.
“Enough talking, huh?” Maian recognized his old teacher’s gesture and said no more as he followed alongside him in silence.
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“Do you think she will be fine?” Laien asked, able to spare some attention to speaking thanks to the flat and straight patch of land he and Yin were riding through.
“I don’t know,” Yin replied and shook his head slightly. As convenient as it was for the two of them to exchange feelings and intentions through their spiritual bond, talking was still the best way to aid them in collecting their thoughts. “His aura alone was as strong as that man’s who fought Rudford, of Einrah’s. If his actual ability is also high, then Jasmine might be in serious trouble,” he concluded bitterly. Having seen Jasmine fight in two very different sets of circumstances, he could tell that her strengths were very specialized. In certain situations, she would shine with unusually great power, but in others, she would be very much underwhelming. Against an earth-element martial master of the sixth rank… he feared that the latter of those two options would be true.
“Yeah,” Laien agreed reluctantly. He had come to the same conclusion as Yin, but despite that, he didn’t want to admit it before himself. However, he also came to feel that he shouldn’t keep denying the reality. “She even immediately told us to flee,” he added with a sigh. As bad as it felt, in that situation there was nothing else they could have done apart from listening to her order. They wouldn’t be of any use against someone so powerful, they would only be dead weight to Jasmine.
“Leave it for now,” Yin said resolutely after a relatively long moment. “We’re only getting distracted thinking about it when we can’t do anything to help her anyway. Let’s focus on getting to the Holy Union safely. Whether Jasmine lives or dies will be entirely up to her ability and her luck,” he suggested, able to think about the whole matter with a relatively cooler head, at least compared to Laien.
“Yeah… got it,” Laien agreed with a sigh. He took a deep breath, then pushed the thoughts about Jasmine away, the look in his eyes changing into a strong and focused one. At this point in time, the best they could do was to get to the Holy Union without getting captured or killed. There were, of course, the questions about how in the world had a supposedly safe ride devolved into this mess. However, just like the subject of Jasmine, he felt that it wasn’t something they ought to concern themselves at the moment for their own good. They could always ponder those things later.
“Three thousand kilometers,” Laien murmured. “At this rate, we can cross this distance in around seven hours. That’s only if no one will come to attack us along the way,” he mused more or less calmly. He could tell that Yin was thinking about the same thing in the back of his head, but he could also tell that Yin was extremely focused on their surroundings. Yin’s instincts and senses had always been better than his, so it would most likely be Yin who would notice any pursuers first.
“I gotta focus too,” Laien reminded himself and emptied his mind. It would be taxing, but he would be able to keep up the greatest level of focus for seven or eight hours straight. As long as the two of them could get out of the Guode Yimarate and to the Yali Kingdom, they ought to be safe.
With Laien and Yin having calmed down, the following two hours passed surprisingly quickly and peacefully. The two of them had spotted some random people and some experts along the way, but none of the marital and spiritual masters approached them. To the contrary, all of them fled the moment they were seen. However, even though saving some time should have made the two of them happy, they couldn’t help but worry; it couldn’t possibly be so easy, could it?
Just as the two of them were beginning to grow hopeful that maybe only Abdain had rushed north and there were no additional experts who could obstruct their way, Yin spotted a group of five ruby-golden-robed riders that was galloping straight towards them from ten kilometers away. The five riders were behaving in a very different way compared to all those people who had fled at the first sight of them, so there was no way they wouldn’t grow wary despite the five releasing no aura or killing intent.
“Should we try and fight or should we try and outrun them?” Both Laien and Yin posed the same question before themselves. It would be beyond stupid if they got scared away by a bunch of weaklings who were only pretending to be elites and ended up getting surrounded somewhere further along the way. Yet, it would be even worse if they charged head-first into those five riders only to realize that they weren’t their match when it was too late to run, wouldn’t it?
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“Run,” the two of them came to the same conclusion and quickly turned their horses towards the south-east. Even though in the time it took them to make this decision, the distance between their two parties shrunk by almost a kilometer, they were still nine kilometers apart. As long as they went in a half-circle, they could potentially avoid fighting those five; and in the worst-case scenario, if there were speed-types amongst those five, then they would only need to deal with them instead of fighting the whole group at once.
“Tch, unlucky,” the man at the head of the group of five riders complained unhappily. “Maybe we gave them too much credit by not changing our robes? We might have been overthinking it when we thought they’d assume we’re flaunting our status too much and thus are only pretending to be strong,” he said with a sigh. The horses the boys were riding were obviously just a step away from growing into the rare Realm of Heroes magical beasts, so chasing them down would be hard. By the looks of it, they were in for a few hours long chase, eh?
“What do you mean ‘we’ gave them too much credit, huh?” the only other long-haired man said with a snort. “It was your idea, so don’t push the blame on us when it didn’t work out,” he reminded, appearing to be quite annoyed. This self-proclaimed leader of theirs would undoubtedly take all the credit for himself had his plan succeeded, but he was pushing the blame equally when it didn’t! That was why he hated working together with him, but as a fellow speed-oriented marital master, he would often have no choice but to grit his teeth and cooperate with him, willingly or not.
“Hmph,” the man at the head snorted unhappily. “If you want to be a smartass, then why don’t you volunteer and go kill the horses of those two? If they are dealt with, then we will be able to run them down easily,” he suggested with a grin. If this annoying friend of his agreed, then they could go back to their residences and relax much earlier.
“Screw you,” the long-haired man replied angrily. “Our horses are better suited to this terrain, we know the area better and we are better riders. It will take some time, but we will catch up like that in half an hour at most. If you want someone to risk ending like those Wind and Lightning Brothers, then why don’t you go kill those horses on your own? I’m sure you’ll do better than me,” he said and laughed sarcastically. The most dangerous kind of a beast was one that was cornered, with no path to escape! If he didn’t know this much, then he wouldn’t be alive today.
“Just go together,” someone else proposed with a cheeky smile. “If it’s two of you, it shouldn’t be too dangerous, eh?” the man said wryly.
“Screw off,” the two long-haired men replied at the same time, then exchanged a glance and snorted at each other. After a few seconds, the one riding in the forefront spoke up. “Why should we risk anything? The moment those two realize they’ve got no chance to run, they will attack desperately, perhaps even abandoning their own safety in order to strike. Whether it’s a ten percent or a thirty percent chance, I’m not going to risk dying in this stupid way when there’s no need to risk anything.”
“Fine, fine,” the same man as before said with a laugh. “Let’s hurry up then. If we lose the sight of them, then it will become annoying again,” he added casually. Although this mission wasn’t their typical one, he didn’t mind at all. As long as those two speed-types of theirs stopped arguing, they would be able to finish their task sooner or later.
Having come to an agreement, the five ruby-golden-robed riders chased after their two targets. They concentrated to their utmost in order to optimize their speed and avoid any potential obstacles, they pushed their horses to the limit… but as the minutes passed, they started recognizing that something was wrong. By the time twenty minutes had gone by, they all became certain that it wasn’t just a fluke; they were only gaining the distance on those two at a very, very slow rate!
It was definitely true that their Hisan Horses were better suited to crossing the relatively flat but loitered with many obstacles terrain of the Guode Yimarate. It was also true that they were roughly familiar with the area, but since they needed to chase straight after those two kids, this advantage failed to influence their relative speeds all that much. So… it really could only be that those two youths were excellent riders? This ride wasn’t all that hard, so as long as they were skilled they wouldn’t make any mistakes and they wouldn’t lose any seconds at every other moment. The boys weren’t necessarily better at horse-riding than them, but they surely were at the expert level!
“We need to move more towards the north,” the man at the head said sternly. “They are slowly turning eastwards, so at this rate they might get dangerously close to the Holy Union if we keep going like that. Let’s take a step back and block them from escaping. When master or the second unit arrives, we will be able to capture them easily enough,” he explained discontentedly. He still wasn’t willing to take the risk and attack the boys directly, at least not until they didn’t have any other option left. He was still young and he had a lot to look forward to in his life, he didn’t want to die!
The remaining four didn’t voice any objections. The other long-haired man was equally unenthusiastic about risking his own life unless absolutely necessary, while the remaining three had no authority over those two companions of theirs. Thus, the five of them went ahead and shifted the direction they were riding towards slightly to the left. Although it wasn’t much, it would soon show its effects after a few kilometers; and if the boys tried to cut-in and turned sharply, then those eight or nine kilometers between their two parties would shrink instantly, making it impossible for them to reach the borders of the Holy Union before they were caught up with.
At roughly the same time, Yin glanced over his shoulder for a brief moment. The look on his face turned grim when he noticed that the five riders were slowly straying towards the north. The two of them might have still been able to outrun them if the chase continued as it was, but the moment the five chose to simply cut them off from the Holy Union and gave up on catching them immediately things became quite difficult.
“Let’s do that.” Laien’s sudden words startled Yin a little. “We’ve got no other choice. It’s dangerous, but it should be our best chance,” Laien added with a smile. Their only other option would be to turn around and attempt to fight those five and that would be a suicide. In the beginning, those five men were suppressing their auras entirely, but now they started slacking on that. Thus, both of them could tell that the best-case scenario would be if they dragged two or three of those five to death at the cost of their own lives. What was most likely to happen, however, was that they would be killed or captured without killing even one of those five experts.
“… Are you sure?” Yin asked reluctantly. For a second, he considered if they couldn’t just surrender and hope for the best… but when he thought about the consequences of such a choice, he discarded it instantly. As long as they got captured, they would be used as a trading chip with Makarash, the Ruishi Federation, and possibly the Sarkcente Kingdom. Were they just important nobles, then they could have perhaps hoped to live in shame afterwards… but after they had displayed their talent and strength to their enemies, there was no way they would be left alive after everything was said and done.
“Yeah, let’s bet on our luck,” Laien said, then laughed in an unexpectedly lighthearted manner. “You know when we need to get off, so at least we’ve got a chance,” he said with a smirk on his face, though despite his strong front his hands were shaking a bit and his heart was beating wildly. Facing death… he might have been in a few such hopeless situations before, but it wasn’t something that one could get used to just because he experienced it three or four times.
“Okay.” Yin let out a long breath, trying to calm down both his body and mind. “We’ll need to lead them on if we want it to work out. It’s going to get dangerous… so we need to go through the shortcut. It won’t work if we take the regular road,” he explained all the while attempting to recall the details of the map which always hung on the wall of his grandfather’s house.
“Three hundred kilometers until we leave the Guode Yimarate’s borders,” he murmured quietly but made sure that his voice reached Laien’s ears properly. “Then fifty kilometers of the flat mountainside, one thousand kilometers of rough terrain… and the shortcut,” he said with glistering eyes as he looked around, trying to find any recognizable landmarks. To arrive where they needed on the first try, he couldn’t rely merely on the gut feeling. If he didn’t follow the map to the letter, then they would miss the beginning of the shortcut and only end up getting stuck in the mountains.
“There,” he said excitedly as his gaze was drawn towards one of the faraway mountaintops. If he remembered correctly, then the hidden path was twenty kilometers south of the steepest part of that cone-like mountain. “Let’s do it, let’s test our luck,” he said and clenched his fists, then returned his whole focus to riding and leading the way. North to the Holy Union, south to the Ruishi Federation… they were heading in neither of those two ways.
As such, the persistent and seemingly dull chase continued. Yet, to those involved the minutes passing were more like seconds, especially for Laien and Yin. The three hundred kilometers that separated them from the eastern border of the Guode Yimarate was crossed by them before they noticed. Luckily, they didn’t need to be on top of their toes the whole time since the five men were no longer pursuing them so strongly and were content with circling to their north. However, as their two groups left the Guode Yimarate and started riding along the infertile slope of the sky-piercing mountains to the east, the five ruby-golden-robed men naturally grew anxious.
“Those kids…” the long-haired man muttered, both anxiety and fear appearing in his voice for the first time. “They aren’t trying to go north towards the Holy Union and they aren’t turning south to the Ruishi Federation… don’t tell me they are planning to go into the Forbidden Lands?” he speculated, but those mere words and the possibility they brought caused a shiver to run through his body. The other four men had similar reactions as they started growing nervous.
The Forbidden Lands weren’t called that for nothing! There were innumerable stories of powerful experts attempting to get there, be it through few seemingly open passes or through the small mountain paths. There had even been arrogant nobles and Kings who, tempted by the dreams of obtaining treasures and knowledge in order to extend their lives had brought entire armies into the Forbidden Lands. However, without exception, all throughout the history those people would perish and their corpses would sometimes be thrown down the mountains as a warning to the future trespassers. There hadn’t been one person who intruded the Forbidden Lands and came back alive!
“What do we do?” the second of the tow long-haired men asked bitterly. They were still a long distance away from the true core of those mountains, but just riding towards it brought him a considerable mental pressure. “If they want to die with us in the Forbidden Lands, then sorry but I’m not signing up for it. I’d rather risk it and try to kill their horses now,” he suggested openly, and he could see that the three of his companions who were riding on his two sides agreed with him. That ‘ten to thirty percent possibility of dying’ when attacking those boys two on two was still far better than getting their whole unit wiped out with one hundred percent certainty! The Forbidden Lands weren’t a thing to be trifled with!
“Wait,” the long-haired man in the front said, causing the other four men to frown. However, he followed up quickly. “Take a better look. The terrain has changed, those two are slowing down. If we give our best, then we can all get within the string range before we enter the dangerous regions,” he explained, then added with a smirk. “And look, they are just riding towards the mountains at random. Are they hoping we would panic and stop chasing them? They’ll get stuck on the cliffs and we will be able to catch them either way.”
“True…” the second long-haired man admitted. “But trying to cross those damned mountains by climbing over them or flying over them is synonymous with a suicide. We were told to capture them, so let’s try to do that before they get themselves and us killed. I agree we can try and chase them down, but if it looks like they are going to get away, the two of us will step in, okay?” he asked, thinking that it would be the safest and most reasonable thing they could do in this situation.
“Fine,” the long-haired man in the front agreed. There was no way they could tell their master that they allowed the boys to kill themselves in the Forbidden Lands just because they were too scared to engage them in a fight. Thus, logically speaking, with the information available to them, there wasn’t anything else they could do.