Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 54. An Early Arrival.
“Whoa, that’s some great commodity!” Tashakir said with a broad smile. “What do you think guys, eh? Looking good?” he moved to the side and asked his friends for an opinion.
“Pretty tasty.”
“Wow, you weren’t joking, they are nice!”
“I’m so going to come back tomorrow for that green-haired one.”
“That black-haired one is more of my type, so I will take him.”
“You guys still didn’t have enough?”
The over a dozen men had nothing but praise for the two boys they saw. The two of them were similar, but at the same time were very different, and the contrast of the obsidian-black and golden earrings only added to the unique charm of having them stand next to each other. There wasn’t even an excessive amount of makeup on their faces, but just enough to empathize their strong points. Undoubtedly those two were worth a pretty penny.
“You can’t touch those two, none of you can!” the chamberlain spoke angrily, although with his face as white as paper. He couldn’t allow those brutes to destroy the most precious slaves in the harem! It would be a disaster if they did!
“You think you can forbid me from doing anything? You?” Tashakir asked disdainfully. He snorted with a smirk when he saw the chamberlain shrink away and not speak up anymore; who would ever pay attention not only to a weakling, but also a coward? “Still,” he said more calmly, no longer smirking or smiling. “We’ve had enough fun for today. There’s no point drinking a fine wine when you are already dead drunk,” he said with a laugh and gave Laien and Yin one last glance, then began walking away and gestured his friends to follow him.
“Right. My older brother is still staying around. I swear this libido of his is bottomless, do me a favor and tell him we returned without him,” he said without a care and without doing as much as turning his head around to look at the chamberlain. He and his friends left, their passing accompanied by the sounds of laughter and chatter.
The chamberlain looked like he had been slapped across the face multiple times and was quite stressed, but he wasn’t nearly as relieved as Laien and Yin. Tashakir was already a peak martial master of the fifth rank and only needed to train his body a bit more to breakthrough to the sixth rank, but they had a feeling that this group of men had at least three more martial masters of the fifth rank in it! Had any of those men decided to probe their bodies with aura on a whim, then their fate would have been really miserable. They had agreed to help Flora because they felt it was the right thing to do… but was keeping true to their hearts really worth this kind of risk? They weren’t so sure anymore.
“Ugh, forget it,” the chamberlain shook his head helplessly. “I will try to find some private rooms for you two so those drunkards won’t damage you until the Grand Yimar arrives. Until then stay inside and better make sure that Tashakir’s brother doesn’t take notice of you when he returns,” he ordered with a sigh, and meanwhile nodded lightly at the two guards who exited the common chamber and returned to standing by the door. They had probably been chased away from their spot by Tashakir and made to help with picking out the kids; the four inner guards were mute eunuchs after all. It was pointless to ask them anything as they neither would be able to respond nor would they know how to answer a question like ‘which of those slaves do you like the best’.
With their hearts still beating very quickly, Laien and Yin did as they were told and entered the common chamber. After seeing them enter the chamberlain exchanged a brief look with the two door guards and left, knowing that he doesn’t need to remind the two men what their duties were.
With the thick wooden door closing behind them, Laien and Yin entered the large chamber. The room was fairly dark as it was only illuminated by a few oil lamps; it smelled of various fruit aromas that undoubtedly came from the basins filled with smoldering charcoal-like stones. The room had no windows, but the air here was fairly fresh; in any other circumstances this place would have been perfect to relax and rest in. However, the two youths who had just entered the room were now thinking about anything but relaxing and having fun as they both stared blankly at the scene unfolding before their eyes.
There were around sixty boys between the age of six and fourteen in the chamber. They all wore the same dark olive robes; some of them raised their heads and looked at the two new arrivals, but most didn’t bother to move as they shrank in themselves and only tried not to draw anyone’s attention. The room reeked of fear so much that the air itself seemed to grow heavier due to it, making each breath much harder than it should have normally been.
In the center of the room, scattered either on the floor or on the big pillows was a group of around twenty youths. None of them moved an inch when they entered, some had their eyes closed, others stared blankly at the floor or at a random point in the space. It was dark so it wasn’t easy to see, but Laien and Yin could make out the shapes and colors with ease. The fresh olive robes of those boys were slowly soaking with stains of blood, the strands of which often flowed unceasingly from the boys’ mouths and onto the floor or the pillows. More than half of the twenty-something boys… twenty-three, to be exact, had their limbs twisted in an unnatural way. Those weren’t just broken bones; their arms, legs and often shoulders were dislocated with so much force that the joints shattered completely.
Laien and Yin were both suppressing the murderous aura that swelled inside them, but between the two of them, it was Yin who found himself on the verge of exploding with anger. Unlike Laien he had mainly experienced suffering and never really witnessed the darkest aspects of the world, the ones which usually stayed well-hidden and were there for the richest to revel in. Thus, Yin couldn’t help but be absolutely furious when he thought what those youths must have had gone through to end up in this state. If he could, he would murder all those who had a hand in creating those harems in the most painful way possible; he would make it so no one in the world would ever think of committing similar atrocities ever again…!
“Yin, calm down,” Laien stepped in front of Yin and whispered quietly, aware that Yin’s killing intent could begin leaking out at any second. “If we lose our cool now we are both screwed. I’m angry too, but what can we do?” he continued saying quietly, all the while looking into Yin’s green eyes.
Yin clenched his teeth, then sighed quietly, closed his eyes and rested his head against Laien’s shoulder. He hid his face in the light-brown cloak Laien was wearing, partially to calm down and partially to be just a bit further away from what was in this chamber. He stayed like that for a moment, emptying his heads of any thoughts and slowly calming down the killing intent that boiled inside his heart.
The four inner guards looked at Laien and Yin briefly, but since they two weren’t being loud and weren’t making a scene, they soon returned to standing still in the four corners of the chamber in a half-asleep, motionless state.
“I’m fine already, thanks,” Yin whispered and moved half a step back. The desire for blood still lingered in his eyes, but there was no longer a danger of his emotions overflowing. “Let’s find those two and get out of here,” he said in a low, but strong voice.
“Yeah,” Laien agreed. He had already spotted the long brown hair Claire mentioned her nephew had in that group of twenty-three youths so all he did now was send out strands of his aura and probe all the kids in the chambers, along with the four inner guards and the two door guards. With the aid of the Aspect of Awareness and thanks to his powerful soul and high-level Aura Manipulating Art, he found it easy to send the strands even as far as one hundred meters away to cover the furthest points of the chamber. Still, using his aura in this manner placed a large burden on his mind so if he wanted to sustain a probing of a large area for more than a dozen seconds he would find it incredibly hard to do.
“That one should be Louis,” he murmured. “But I can’t find anyone who is a spiritual practitioner of the third rank like Nathan should be. There is no one of the fourth rank either,” he added quietly, controlling his voice with his Qi to not spread too far just to be on the safe side.
“You don’t think he might be…” Yin said weakly. If that kid wasn’t here, then he was either dead… or he was still with Tashakir’s older brother.
Laien took a deep breath; the best way to go about it was to ask Louis. First and foremost though, they needed to get rid of those four guards in the chamber. Luckily, the men were merely at the sixth mortal realm as marital practitioners and they weren’t even paying attention to what was going on. They were pretty far away for better or worse, so the key was to take them out quietly simultaneously.
With that in mind, Laien focused to not leak any of his aura as he controlled a very small amount of spiritual energy to form four needles of ice. This kind of things would be mostly useless against stronger martial practitioners, but they were more than enough against those four weaklings. When the needles formed completely, he sent them slicing through the air. The needles were accompanied merely by a quiet, strange whistling sound. By the time the four inner guards opened their eyes, thinking that something was wrong, the needles pierced their heads and froze their brains, killing them before they could let out any kind of a sound.
Their four bodies stood there for a few more seconds before the muscles in their bodies turned limp and they slowly slid against the walls they were leaning against. The four corpses seated themselves without any alarming sounds thanks to the positions they had been standing in, sparing Laien the effort of freezing their whole bodies in place, just as Laien thought would happen.
Laien and Yin exchanged a look, nodded at each other and walked up to Louis who was lying flat on the floor. The guy was obviously unconscious, but apart from the bruised face, he didn’t appear to be too wounded at the first glance. However, even though he was on his stomach there was a fresh blood stain on the robe just below his back. Not wanting to imagine where it came from, Laien produced some water and covered Louis’s body with it, at the same time forcefully and carefully sending spiritual energy into his body to check for any internal injuries.
“Heavens…” Laien murmured with shock painting itself on his face. He wasn’t a person to call upon the Heavens or the Gods when he was surprised or in dire straits, but the wounds of this eleven-year-old were enough to make it hard for him to hold back his killing intent. “Heavy internal bleeding, damaged organs all over his stomach, dislocated and broken hip joints… broken bones in his legs, a few missing teeth… plus quite a few bruises… it’s going to take nearly half of my spiritual energy to heal him,” he said resignedly. It was already hard for him to use spiritual energy to heal someone else than Yin, and perhaps Siana. There was no way he could use his Qi in the same way despite possessing an Absolute Water Martial Realm… or could he?
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“Didn’t I also use both my spiritual energy and Qi to release magic back then in the cave? I’ve been doing the same while sparring Yin, using both energies at once. Yet, when competing with that woman I ended up using only spiritual energy by the force of a habit since I didn’t feel like I was in danger…” he slowly came to a realization, then attempted to send some Qi to aid in the process of healing. To his pleasant surprise, it ended up working just well! By the looks of it the Absolute cultivation bases weren’t named so just for show; to think they enabled even a martial practitioner to heal someone else without using any secret techniques!
“So it works like that for other people too, huh,” Yin noted quietly. The brief thought of asking if Laien couldn’t at the very least patch up all the wounded kids and youths in here passed through his mind, but he rejected it just as quickly as it came. Even if it took only half of Laien’s full spiritual energy and Qi capacity to help the remaining twenty-two boys, they couldn’t afford to waste time and wait until Laien recovered his strength. They were already putting themselves in enough risk as it was.
“Done,” Laien said after just about two minutes passed. “I only used up about one-fifth of my spiritual energy and Qi, maybe a bit less,” he commented contentedly. Using both energies at once appear to be making them about fifty percent stronger compared to using them separately. Although it couldn’t be compared to the qualitative difference of three, four times between Yin’s normal white-blue lightning and his emerald lighting, it was still pretty good.
“The scary thing is that Yin is already somewhat stronger than me despite using only his basic lightning.” Laien smiled to himself, then breathed out lightly and returned his focus to the present. “Oi, wake up,” having rolled Louis on his back he urged while slapping his face with fairly lightly. He shook Louis’s shoulder too, but the boy showed no sign of waking up.
“We’ve got no time for that…” Laien groaned, then produced a ball of water above Louis’s head. He cooled it down through the Principle of Energy almost to the point of freezing, then splashed the water directly into Louis’s face. The effect was instantaneous; the eleven-year-old started coughing and opened his eyes, then began rubbing them with one hand as he was trying to make out what was happening and where he was. He appeared to be fairly confused, but after a few seconds everything came back to him. He did manage to stop himself from crying out; he remembered all too well that every time he cried out, he would be hurt again. Even now when he woke up from that nightmare he instinctively clenched his throat and trapped the yell inside it.
“We’re here to save you, so please don’t shout,” Laien explained with a little sarcastic smirk on his face. He had been a bit too hasty in waking Louis up; he should have held his mouth shut or something. Thankfully the boy didn’t make a ruckus, and the others in this room… they weren’t even paying attention to what was going on. They were not much better than living corpses.
“Flora and Claire sent us,” Yin explained, seeing as Louis was still confused and unable to gather his thoughts. “We found you, but we don’t see Nathan. You two are friends, right? Do you know where he might be?” he asked, hoping that Louis would regain the clarity of his mind when he understood what was going on and what needed to be done.
The question seemed to have finally caused Louis to overcome the fear and confusion as his eyes suddenly regained focus. His legs twitched a bit, then moved as he checked if he really wasn’t hurting anymore. He looked around and trembled strongly as he saw the state of the other boys around and recalled what had been happening to him the past few hours. “Nathan…” he began saying in a breaking voice, but then clenched his fists and coughed a few times to clear his throat. “I remember he got taken to a room close to the one I was in,” he said more clearly than before and raised his head to look directly at Laien and Yin.
“Do you remember where you were taken? Where is that room?” Yin asked again without delay, fearing that Nathan could very well die if they ended up being late.
“I think I do,” Louis nodded slightly, then glanced at the floor as he tried to remember where those men had taken them while they were being carried and dragged along. “After you leave this room you need to turn left and go straight ahead… for quite a long time. There should be something like a reddish painting on the wall to your right. After you pass it, go into the first corridor to the right. I’m pretty sure you need to take second left turn later, the rooms will be all along the corridor… but I can’t remember which one Nathan is in. I know it was to the right, just like the one I was in…” he swiftly told the boys before him everything he could remember, all the while forcing himself not to panic as the many scary and painful memories kept flashing past his eyes.
“Hurry up, please,” he said as strongly as he could, but his voice still came out fairly weak. “Go and save him. His body was never that strong to begin with… I… I will wait here, so…” he spoke despite his own fear. He obviously didn’t want to be left here alone, he wanted to go back home… but he couldn’t leave his friend here, with those crazy people…! He was incredibly scared of them returning, but he would never do something as shameful as running alone while his best friend was still in this hell.
“We will save him and come back for you,” Yin reassured, impressed by the boy’s words. He was pretty sure Louis had never personally experienced any killing or slaughter, much less experienced a pain both physical and mental as extreme as he had gone through this day. Yet, he was still able to overcome his fear and put a priority on saving his friend; his behavior was truly admirable.
“Let’s hurry up,” Laien said with an ever so slight smile on his face. He nodded at Louis, looking at him with quite some respect; then, without wasting any more time he stood up and approached the door.
The two door guards were a bit stronger than the inner guards, but they were still only at the eighth mortal realm. They were both leaning against the wall at both sides of the door; they just stood there unmovingly, slowly becoming more and more drowsy. They couldn’t be more defenseless against a sudden ambush than that and so they swiftly fell prey to Laien’s ice magic. The two slim and long spikes of ice pierced the wall and subsequently drilled into their skulls, killing them in an instant.
Meanwhile, Yin collected the corpses of the four inner guards into his interspatial ring. He hurriedly joined Laien who had just done the same with the two door guards he killed, then ran with him along the way Louis had described to them. They needed to rescue Nathan, come back here and flee the Grand Palace as soon as possible. The longer they stayed in this place, the higher the possibility of someone finding out the guards were missing and raising an alarm were.
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Around the same time, at the western gate of the City of Palee.
The streets had mainly emptied themselves compared to the morning, so the gate guards all stood in the shadow of the walls and chatted leisurely while drinking ale. One or two of them would be occupied at all times with the people coming in, but there was little to no reason to be checking those going out of the city so most of them had nothing better to do than to drink and laugh.
“Huh? What’s that sound?” one of the guards asked out of the blue. Since he wasn’t quite as drunk as his friends yet he just about made out the strange sound amongst the laughs of his companions.
“What soun-“ another one of the guards began asking, but as everyone quieted down for a second he also heard the strange rumbling sound. Unlike the rest of the guards here, he had come from the mainland not too long ago so he knew this sound all too well. This kind of rumbling noise could only be created by a large number of riders! Which important figure was coming to the city at a time like that? Was it the Grand Yimar? But wasn’t he supposed to come a few days later?
“T-those people are…!” the captain of the guards exclaimed in shock when he saw the four riders in the front and the orderly lines of white-clothed men riding exquisite Hisan horses that followed behind them. Those men were no one else but the elite White Guard of the Grand Yimar Mustafa’s! So the Grand Yimar coming from the mainland was Mustafa the Humble!
“Hurry up and clear the streets! Go! Go now!” the captain shouted at his men, using Qi to sober up at the same time without a second thought. They couldn’t afford to present themselves poorly before someone as great as the Grand Yimar Mustafa!
As the guards scrambled to make the last-minute preparations, the four riders in the forefront slowed down from a fast-paced gallop to a reasonably fast trot.
“We’ve made it!” Arslan called out merrily while looking at the walls of the city. “We’re well in time, aren’t we, father?” he asked with a broad smile, knowing that he had won the bet with his father. His body was hurting all over and he was fairly tired, but it didn’t matter to him at all. What was important was that he had more than met his father’s expectations!
“With more than half an hour before the time limit,” Mustafa replied with a laugh. “You won, so you can ask me one thing; whatever you like,” he confirmed again, looking forward to hearing what kind of thing his son would ask him for.
Arslan glanced at his father with a cheerful smile on his face. He didn’t really care about the bet that much; getting to spend time with his father was much more important to him. Well, he might come up later with something he could ask his father for, but for now, he wanted to rest a little.
“Six at the line!” Reian looked over his shoulder and shouted to the men. Although it wouldn’t be impossible for them to go through the gate and the streets in their current formation, it would be more convenient to thin it out a little.
Naturally, the thousand White Guards obeyed the orders of the young General and changed the formation to six riders in one line. They then followed Mustafa, Arslan, Reian and the guide into the city, heading straight to the Grand Palace in the center of it.
“The street is clear,” Arslan pointed out and smiled wryly. “Father, the first one to the Grand Palace wins, how about it?” he went with the feelings of the moment and suggested bravely, unsure whether his father would agree or not. However, when he saw the smile on Mustafa’s face he quickly understood that his father was all up for the idea.
“Let’s go!” Mustafa said with a laugh and sent his horse into a gallop, as it worked out starting the race at the same moment Arslan did. The two of them rushed head-to-head through one of the main streets of the city, conveniently avoiding most of the attention they would have otherwise been forced to enjoy.
“Ugh.” Reian smiled resignedly. It looked like this time it would be him who needed to listen to the crowds chanting and yelling; he wished he could join Mustafa and Arslan, but he needed to stay behind and lead the White Guards. He sighed when the first excited cries began rising and when more and more people began prostrating themselves on the ground despite the Grand Yimar having long since passed them at a speed of over two hundred and fifty kilometers per hour.
“I guess it could have been worse,” he consoled himself and stopped paying attention to his surroundings. He simply had his horse carry him onward at a steady and reasonably fast pace, one that was just a little slower than a gallop. When a few minutes more of this torture passed, he would be able to relax in the city’s Grand Palace; or so he kept repeating to himself.
About half a minute after the last rider of the White Guard disappeared beyond the gate, Yimar Sharu emerged from the forest with all the thousands of Realm of Heroes master he had brought with him to greet the Grand Yimar. The look on his face was pretty unsightly to behold; the Grand Yimar and his men had paced themselves based on the riding speed of the Grand Yimar’s five-year-old son. Yet, some of Yimar Sharu’s own men had trouble keeping up; not because of their own lack of endurance, but for two other reasons.
Yimar Sharu could still live with the fact that the horses his men were riding weren’t up to the par with the pureblood Hisan horses the White Guard used, but he was embarrassed to no end when he learned he had lost more than four dozen horses due to his men crashing with each other along the way. The Grand Yimar’s forces were effortlessly riding in a perfect formation, but his own people couldn’t even not crash into one another! How could he ever look the Grand Yimar in the eye if the news of those accidents got out?
With his mood at the all low, Yimar Sharu entered the city and hurried after the Grand Yimar and his men, intent on personally overseeing Mustafa’s stay in the Grand Palace.