Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 5. The Inn in the Mountains.
Noticing how Ruan slowed down before the turn, Laien and Yin pulled on the reins and forced their overeager mounts to do the same instead of attempting to pass through to the forefront to become ‘the first one’. Luckily for them, their war horses were so devoted to their masters they obeyed the command without being stubborn about it at all.
Yet, when the turn actually came it proved hard for both of the youths to emulate what Ruan did; this split-second wasn’t quite enough for them to recognize they needed to direct their horses hard to the right and lean to the side at the same time. Thus, both Laien and Yin lost their balance in the saddles and ended up pulling their horses to the left with their weight. However, the quality and training their mouths had received saved them once again as both War Horses managed not to fall off the road, though they had been dangerously close to doing so.
Another fortunate thing was this particular road was most often fairly empty; there were no important trade routes between the Sarkcente Kingdom and the eastern part of the continent and the few merchants who came were naturally making use of interspatial rings to move most of their goods. The east was fairly unstable in the recent years too, so the only caravans arriving from there would be the ones carrying war slaves; though their most recent wave had arrived a few days ago, so it was unlikely for any more to appear at least for a few weeks.
Thus, the three could afford to take the turns wide and change the sides of the road they were riding at as necessary. It was a bit hard for Laien and Yin to get used to maneuvering smoothly at such a high speed, while in comparison Ruan could afford to keep peeking over his shoulder right after each turn to observe the boys’ mistakes. He would then give them a few tips, of which the most important one was perhaps to attune themselves with their horses. If they focused on the ride and their mounts could sense their intentions before receiving physical instructions, they would be able to maintain a much higher average speed.
More or less in this manner about an hour passed, during which the three had traveled about two hundred and fifty kilometers. “It should be about time. They seem to have gotten used to basics, now time for some real riding,” he mused with a smile, then tucked the sides of his horse and made him speed up right before a sharp turn to the left.
Laien and Yin were quite startled by Ruan’s actions, so they didn’t try doing the same immediately. They looked how the man directed his horse to the right, keeping closer to the middle of the road than to its edge though. They then saw how Ruan made his horse do a sharp, strong turn right before the road was beginning to change directions. The maneuver proved to be timed so perfectly that Ruan lost barely any speed and all and shot out of the turn just as quickly as he entered it. The boys, on the other hand, took the turn in their old way and inevitably lost some distance to Ruan.
“Wow, so you can do things like that too?” Laien and Yin were equally impressed by Ruan’s riding skill. Laien, in particular, felt that his horizons had been broadened; he had been riding horses fairly often but had never met a truly masterful rider before. The old man William was a specialist in raising and training war horses, but he wasn’t that skillful or knowledgeable about riding itself.
Faced with the distance between them and Ruan growing with each turn on the road, Laien and Yin ended up taking fairly different approaches. Being rather stubborn and impatient, Laien refused to fall behind and kept pushing on recklessly all the while trying to get the hand of making those sharp turns; which were only becoming harder as the elevation of the terrain was becoming more and more irregular. As for Yin, he approached the problem with a cool head and didn’t try to rush things. He accepted he would fall behind more and more at first and focused on correcting his mistakes and improving bit by a bit instead of trying to everything all at once.
The hasty approach, the patient approach… neither of the boys could really be blamed for taking either of them. Laien was used to picking up almost everything through personal, very much active experience; just like when he was training his spear arts with Master Shire, he would always jump head-first into anything new and try to figure everything out on the fly. Yin, on the other hand, had always needed to figure out what his grandfather meant and wanted all the time, so he was prone to avoid jumping to conclusions and judging everything at first glance.
The methods of dealing with the problem at hand the boys chose were as different as they could be, and Ruan took notice of that too… but he would have never expected to see what he saw in the next thirty or so minutes. He had been certain Laien would end up having a lot of trouble and Yin would progress smoothly, but what actually happened was both boys improving their skill at a very quick rate. The two even began improvising their own positions in the saddle and began exchanging pointers and peeking what the other was doing at each turn. Their approaches were so different that somehow, they ended up complementing each other and causing the two to gain riding proficiency at a rate which Ruan had thought to be impossible.
“They are helping each other a lot, but it’s not only that,” Ruan mused with a surprised but at the same time very pleased smile. If it weren’t for Laien and Yin improving on their own through the approaches they decided to take, they wouldn’t have been able to give advice and copy the good points from each other.
“Who knew acting reckless could be a sensible learning method if someone is suited to it. Makes me wonder if I shouldn’t have taken a bit different approach with some of my old students,” Ruan thought to himself, then sighed a little. Who knew he would be the one to accidentally learn something about horse riding from those boys? He himself surely hadn’t expected it.
“Let’s see how hard I can push them,” Ruan murmured, then began gradually upping the tempo of their ride. He would ever so often check how the two were doing, then either slow down a bit if the distance between them was getting too big or speed up if the two were catching up to him.
Laien and Yin noticed what Ruan was doing soon enough and they had set a clear goal for themselves; go fast enough for Ruan to be unable to keep running from them anymore! During the many hours long ride they proceeded to make a lot of progress, but they were also growing tired; especially mentally from constantly remaining in a state of a greatly heightened concentration. Thus even though they really wanted to best Ruan, they failed to catch up to him even after riding through the whole two thousand kilometers.
The two boys were disappointed when Ruan stopped at a hardly noticeable crossroads with a small dirt road leading into a forest at the mountainside. Ruan, however… was pretty speechless. He had many students and had seen many young and old riders back in his active days as a courier, but he had never seen anyone improving as fast as those two kids. The two really forced him to work some sweat in order to keep ahead of them; with a few more weeks of experience, they would probably be able to keep up with him as long as they exchanged their war horses for the special breed he was riding.
“Why the long faces?” Ruan asked with a laugh as the two boys approached on their war horses. “You lost so you will be cooking on your own, but you did great. Consider me impressed,” he praised very honestly, though also a bit awkwardly; he was used to criticizing his students, not to being so commendable towards them.
“We did well, but we still didn’t catch up to you at all,” Laien grumbled, not satisfied with the result. He and Yin had been trying so hard and yet they still failed!
“I would have been a total failure as an ex-courier if two twelve-year-olds caught up to me during their first serious ride,” Ruan said with a chuckle. It was good to be ambitious and competitive, but Laien seemed to have embodied those qualities to the extreme; or was he just a sore loser? He couldn’t quite tell at this point. The first impression Laien gave him wasn’t the best one, but the boy started acting normally later on. It was hard to say indeed.
“So you were a courier?” Laien couldn’t help but say. “Hm?” he raised his eyebrows and looked to the side, sensing Yin’s slight confusion. “Couriers’ job is to deliver the important messages when birds can’t be quite trusted with the job. They need to be as fast as possible and usually, they are at constant risk of getting targeted by enemy factions’ martial and spiritual masters. There aren’t many ex-couriers,” he explained, truthfully looking at Ruan in a different light. He even didn’t mind losing this riding competition to him anymore; since Ruan was once a courier it only made sense.
“Thanks,” Yin said with a quiet laugh. He had felt he and Laien understood each other well even before they entered the Blood Pact, but now it was so simple for them to communicate that it honestly was quite amusing to do.
Ruan once again found the little exchange between the boys to be somewhat confusing, but he simply assumed Laien and Yin were good friends and didn’t think about it too much. “I was a courier for forty years, then I retired and became a guard at one of the branches of the Valius family,” he mentioned offhandedly, not too fond of the subject of the Valius family… and the Cail family.
“Come, we got here early and I’m sure you’d like to rest after this ten-hour long ride,” he spoke before the boys could ask any questions, preferring to avoid the subject of his past; at least for now. He thus sighed with relief when the two followed him without inquiring about the matter.
“Well, I am pretty tired but…” Laien mused aloud, in a rather quiet voice… then breathed in as a light, pleasant shiver ran through his body. “Peak of the fifth mortal realm! There really isn’t much of a difference between late and peak stages, but was it supposed to happen so quickly?” he wondered aloud, baffled by the speed of this advancement.
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“The difference between late and peak stages is more about your body than Qi,” Yin explained with a smile. “If your physical body isn’t trained well enough then even if you accumulate enough Qi, you won’t advance to the peak of the realm and will be stuck in its late stages. That’s why those who don’t train are most often stuck around second or third mortal realm,” he elaborated in detail, having had the chance to read quite a few books about the outside world at his grandfather’s place.
“Oh, so that’s how it is,” Laien said with a smile. “I guess everyone in the Sarkcente Kingdom is pretty obsessed with training, so even those who don’t have talent have strong bodies. That might be why no one told me about this,” he speculated, feeling that his conclusion about was most likely correct.
“Makes sense,” Yin agreed with a nod. “Say, two horses fit just about right into this road. Want to race to that inn?” he suggested with a grin, by the look of it still not having had enough of competition for today.
Laien grinned back at Yin; he didn’t need to say anything for Yin to know he was up for the game. They didn’t need a countdown either, they tucked their horses simultaneously and galloped forward. They passed extremely close to Ruan’s sides at a high speed and rushed onwards, disregarding the risk of racing through a small forest road.
“Talk about precious…” Ruan chuckled helplessly. He wasn’t worried about the boy’s or their horses; even if they crashed into trees nothing too bad should happen to them unless they happened to have the worst luck in the world. However, he hoped his friend’s daughter wouldn’t be unlucky enough to randomly jump in front of two galloping horses… “Maybe I should have stopped them,” he thought with a sigh, then carefully sped up and followed after the two boys.
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Laien and Yin charged right out of the forest road, shoulder to shoulder, then both pulled the reins to opposite sides and made their War Horses break and stop forcefully before they could pass through the entire two, three hundred meters area of grass in front of the fairly large inn. Kicking up the ground and tearing the grass with their hooves, the two War Horses skillfully made the sharp turns and managed to lose most of their speed. They then stopped, both breathing a little hard; the ten-hour long gallop tired them out, but they were far from being exhausted.
“It’s a tie, huh,” Laien said with a laugh and jumped to the ground, having had enough of sitting in the saddle for the time being.
“A tie,” Yin said with a smile. He waved his hand and removed the equipment from his horse, storing it into his interspatial ring for the time being.
“They will take care of themselves,” Laien mentioned, seeing that Yin was unsure if he needs to tend to his horse or if it would be fine to leave him alone like this. “They seem to have a small stable here, so those two will find their way there on their own when they get bored. The inn should provide food for them too, so no need to worry about that,” he explained, very happy that their war horses had been trained by no other than William. They really were convenient to manage and easy to deal with.
“Got it,” Yin nodded and after patting his horse’s head, walked up to Laien. Right about then, Ruan rode into the small grassy courtyard.
“We will be leaving in the morning, just like today,” Ruan said with a slight smile, relieved that nothing bad came out of the boys’ little overtime race. “Until then you can do whatever you want,” he said pretty much habitually, then sighed somewhat helplessly when Laien frowned at him.
“Laien!” Yin spoke up again, this time laughing a little and shaking his head. The two of them exchanged a glance, then silently decided to cook themselves this dinner and talk it out on the side, without Ruan or anyone else listening.
Ruan raised his eyebrows slightly, then smirked with a hopeful expression on his face. He was pretty sure those two boys knew each other only for a few days, but Yin seemed to have a good influence on Laien. It wasn’t that Laien was necessarily a bad kid… he just seemed to have gotten a bit too used to standing above everyone else.
“For now I guess I will go and have a chat with Ian,” he mused, already seeing his old friend opening the door and stepping out of the inn with his now nine years old daughter by his side.
“Uncle Ruan!” the girl called out merrily and ran up to Ruan, then hugged him in the waist. She loved when Ruan visited them since he would always tell her those amazing stories! He was so much nicer to her than her father who would always refuse to tell them about his own adventures!
“I didn’t expect to see you until the next month, what happened?” the silver-haired, slender and high Ian asked with a laugh. Ruan would visit them fairly sporadically and had only begun coming after Raia started begging him to promise her to come back to see her at a certain time; could this visit have something to do with those two war horses, or more importantly with those two boys who recklessly rode into their courtyard a moment ago and were now sitting behind the inn?
“I got forced to take an escort mission,” Ruan said with a laugh, meanwhile gently patting Raia’s head.
“Hm? Want me to help you out?” Ian asked, ready to get Ruan out of the potential mess if necessary. They were friends, after all.
“No, it’s fine. Thanks,” Ruan replied calmly. “It’s nothing too dangerous and the boys aren’t that bad either,” he added with a shrug of his shoulders.
“Hoo, you must really have taken a liking to them,” Ian mentioned with a laugh, his gaze resting on his daughter’s back for a second; he was a bit jealous Raia seemed to like Ruan better than him, but he really didn’t want to think about it anymore. There was nothing that could be done and telling Raia all those stories… it would only make it harder for her to accept reality in the future.
“And what makes you think that?” Ruan asked with a smirk but didn’t deny anything. He had a few complaints about Laien’s behavior, but he overall quite liked both him and Yin.
“You didn’t call them young masters,” Ian explained with a wry smile. “You always call kids you don’t like ‘young master’, you aren’t aware of it?” he asked with a laugh, gesturing his friend to come inside. His wife would certainly love to chat with Ruan too so there was no point in the three of them standing outside. As for himself, he certainly hoped Ruan brought some good wine as he always had.
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“Why did you get so angry at Ruan those two times?” Yin inquired calmly, though pretty much could tell why Laien had been annoyed. He wanted Laien to tell him with his own words though… but Laien should more or less understand that too since the two of them were connected by the spiritual bond.
“At first…” Laien began saying, trying to recall how he felt in the morning when Ruan ticked him off. “At both times he just annoyed me with his attitude. Sure he was a courier and is a martial master of the second rank, but how can he treat us as someone lesser than him?” he said angrily, just thinking about Ruan’s words causing him to feel annoyed.
“Was he doing that, really?” Yin asked, the tone of his voice suggesting he was pretty dubious about it. Ruan didn’t come off as arrogant or rude to him at either of those times. In fact, he didn’t come off as arrogant or rude at all.
“He was saying he won’t be babysitting us, then he said we can do whatever we want as if it was up to him to decide that,” Laien explained, keeping his temper in check only because he could tell Yin didn’t want to bicker with him and simply wanted to have an honest talk. He liked Yin very much, so he restrained his nerves and forced himself to listen to whatever point Yin would make.
“Isn’t that just how adults act? At first, he didn’t know us, then I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean anything with deeper meaning by what he said,” Yin argued his point, then recalled a particular word Laien used and brought up. “You mentioned that you felt that Ruan saw us as someone lesser; do you see us as someone better than him?” he asked, curious how exactly Laien’s line of thought looked.
Laien’s first impulse was to say ‘Obviously yes!’, but he instantly realized there was something very wrong with this line of thinking. His face fell slightly as he began considering his own feeling and the reasons behind them. “Maybe not better as a person… but we are more valuable; more talented and more important than him, right?” he asked, feeling quite confused about his own thoughts and emotions. After Yin pointed this thing out he could somewhat tell he had been acting in a silly, stupid way… but he also couldn’t just accept it like that.
“At the moment, we are both kids; young adults at best,” Yin said with a light chuckle, trying to lighten up the mood. “Talent is something that will be important when we actually get strong; right now we are both still fairly weak. Influence? That’s not ours, that’s what belongs to our guardians,” he said very straightforwardly, then added to finish it up. “And even if to those around us see us as more important than other people, does it mean we should be so arrogant we keep acting arrogantly before everyone who isn’t our friend or a powerful expert?”
Laien kept silent for a moment before bringing up unhappily. “Elder brother always said there is space for being slightly arrogant.”
Yin raised his eyebrows, then laughed and agreed with a nod. “There are times when you can be arrogant, but do you really think it was one of them?” he inquired, pretty sure that Laien already understood the point he was making and was agreeing with it but didn’t quite want to admit it.
“… I guess it wasn’t,” Laien admitted with a heavy sigh. He had asked himself; what if someone else acted this way towards him? Then the answer became pretty obvious. Yin was totally right. It was childish of him to get riled up by something so pointless. He should be less arrogant and have some more respect for those around him, not only for his friends and powerful experts.
Yin smiled heartily. He was happy Laien agreed with him but was also feeling a bit uncomfortable about making Laien feel so bad in the process. “My… father used to say that during your first meeting, you should treat the person as well as you can. Then from the second meeting onward, you treat them only as well as they treated you,” he mentioned with a slightly melancholic smile. He knew Laien would sense the shift in his emotions… but he also knew Laien wouldn’t pry about things he really wasn’t ready to talk about yet.
Laien finally smiled, finding a lot of sense in those words of Yin’s father’s. He sighed again, this time though with more relief than anything else. He nearly began arguing that this advice was only viable if the other person was being completely honest with you and wasn’t acting, but he recognized it was more about the principle than the details. Overall… overall he really needed to tune down on thinking too highly of himself. Wasn’t that also partially the reason why he had dared to so casually get involved in the strife between Royal Children? He truly had so much to learn about his own mentality; he couldn’t just look at almost everyone else as not worth paying attention to or being respectful to!
“That being said…” Laien brought up with a helpless smile. “I have no idea how to cook, so what do we do?” he asked, a bit ashamed of himself. He had no qualms about agreeing to the bet which involved cooking… but he actually had no idea at all how to prepare anything remotely edible.
“I know how to cook a few simple things so just help me prepare the fire and the ingredients,” Yin replied with a chuckle, then withdrew some wood, food and basic cooking equipment from his interspatial ring.
Laien breathed with relief; after all this riding he really wanted to eat something hot and not completely awful, so Yin’s ability to cook was like a godsend to him.