Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 6. Getting Ahead of Yourself.
Laien quickly finished setting up the wood for a nice, small bonfire. He had done this a few times with Rudford when they would go travel around the Sarkcente Kingdom, so it didn’t take him long at all. He then flicked his finger and sent a surge of pure spiritual energy towards the wood, mixing it with the positive aspect of the Principle of Energy; the bonfire instantly burst forth with a strong flame, which calmed down a second later when the spiritual energy dispersed.
This kind of use of the Principle of Energy was fairly normal to Laien, but Yin was very surprised to see it. He had obviously sensed that Laien was using the Principle of Energy when they fought… but he would have never guessed it could have anything to do with the ice and the hot mist Laien displayed back then! “How did you do it? How does it work?” he asked excitedly and impatiently, not even waiting for Laien to bring it up on his own.
“Pretty simply?” Laien asked and raised both of his hands. He gathered some positive energy above the palm of his left hand and created a not too big ball of water above the right one. “If something is hot, it contains a lot of this ‘positive’ energy,” he said and sent both parts towards the middle, mixing them and thus causing water to turn into a very hot mist.
“It’s the same the other way around,” he dispersed the hot mist and repeated the process, this time using the Principle of Energy from the other spectrum. “You mix the negative aspect, the cold one and cause the thing to grow colder,” he explained, creating a ball of ice in front of himself. “And finally if you use what I call Primordial Energy, you don’t change the properties of the element but only enhance it,” he summed up, displaying some water in its neutral state being strengthened by the colorless Primordial Energy.
Yin’s eyes glittered the whole time he listened to Laien’s explanation and observed how the different types of energy were being displayed by him. He raised his hand, but unlike Laien didn’t open it fully. He first did what he would always do; he circulated his Qi and released a bit of lightning, enhancing it with the neutral ‘Primordial Energy’ and allowing it to dance all over his hand for a few seconds
Then, he attempted to recreate the negative energy Laien used and add it to his lightning-element Qi. The strands of lightning reacted almost immediately and began converging into a liquid-like mass of unstable lightning… which soon burst forth as it went out of Yin’s control. The sparks flew everywhere, but thankfully Yin didn’t use much Qi to begin with so the accident was pretty much harmless to him, Laien and even their surroundings.
“Wow, it’s harder to control than I thought,” Yin said with a laugh, then repeated the same process while supporting himself with the Aspect of Humility. This time he managed to converge a stable mass of something that was neither lightning nor liquid; it was a fairly strange thing. “It’s stable, but it doesn’t feel like I could use it for defense… the basic forms seem to be more convenient,” he mused aloud, allowing the strange liquid-like lightning to dissipate.
“Let me try it with the positive one,” he said with a smile, cautiously supporting himself with the Aspect of Humility from the first step. The lightning over his and began surging and dancing about his whole arm, even trying to reach out to the ground as if it had grown excited. Yin’s expression changed to a very pleased one as he realized something, then pointed out with his hand and caused the lightning to fly through the air and naturally dissipate after about a dozen meters.
“It loses strength fast with the distance, but now I can direct it much further away from my body. That’s super useful!” Yin exclaimed happily. He wanted to improve his mid-range abilities for quite some time now but found no good way of doing so. He didn’t think there existed such a simple way to fix this problem!
“Good for you,” Laien said with a laugh and exchanged a glance with Yin. “I admit it makes me feel like I’m falling even further behind though,” he added, both of them pretty much knowing what the other was thinking anyway. The more one of them was conscious of something or the more he was bothered by it, the easier to sense and more obvious would it become.
“Falling behind?” Yin asked, pretty surprised by Laien’s statement. “I’m just a martial practitioner, but you are a dual practitioner. We both have a lot of insights. If anything it should be me saying I’m worried I will fall behind you,” he said with a light laugh, going back to slowly cutting up the ingredients for the bullion he wanted to make.
“Then tell me, how many of those four Aspects of yours have full foundations?” Laien asked straightforwardly, very much curious to get to know about Yin’s abilities.
“You know about foundations?” Yin asked, quite surprised by this revelation. “I am pretty sure Pride and Humility have complete foundations, Awareness only half while Desire has no foundation at all yet,” he answered quickly and wanted to ask Laien the same thing, but Laien ended up bringing up something else right afterward.
“So you can’t go inside your soul… into the soul realm yet?” Laien asked with a slightly wry smile; and as he hoped, Yin revealed another surprised look.
“The books said only a few of the most powerful spiritual masters from the north know about the existence of the soul realm and can send their consciousness into it,” Yin explained himself, beginning to feel embarrassed about getting surprised by every little thing. Although at the same time, he was beginning to wonder how Laien knew so much. It would be understandable if he came from the Forbidden Lands, but he was from the outside world!
“What do you want to ask?” Laien inquired, ware that Yin was very intrigued about something and very much wanted to ask him about it.
“Uh, two things for now; how good are your foundations and how do you know so much about all those things?”
“Full foundations of Tranquility and Wrath, half of Awareness,” Laien responded with a smile. “As for how I know those things… I mostly figured them out on my own, though I got advice and pointers here and there,” he explained vaguely, at the moment not too inclined to start telling Yin the whole story behind each of his insights.
“On your own…” Yin uttered with disbelief. It was one thing to be aware of the goal and work towards it, but to find the correct way on your own… well yeah, he himself might have done a bit similar thing with his training, but he knew the theory from the very beginning! He had access to all the knowledge! “Then the different attributes of water, the ‘Profound Mysteries’ of the Elemental Laws, you figured them out on your own too? In a country of martial practitioners?” he asked, his disbelief growing stronger and stronger.
“Profound Mysteries? Elemental Laws?” Laien asked with a slight frown. “No, I’ve never heard of them,” he said and shook his head. Did Yin go a bit too far in his assumptions? Also, just how much did people in the Forbidden Lands know about the cultivation?
“No, I’m pretty sure you were using them,” Yin said confidently, silently asking himself if Laien could have been doing so without even being aware of it. “For example that powerful spell you used in our duel, the area-of-effect one. It was clearly infused with the Profound Mystery of the Storm. Also, pretty much all your defensive spells seemed to have the Profound Mystery of the Tranquil Sea within them; well, the naming might vary, but you were using Mysteries of the Elemental Law of Water. That’s for sure,” he stated clearly, fairly certain he wasn’t mistaken about this matter.
“You mean…” Laien frowned, trying to guess from their names what those Mysteries were. “Something like this… and that?” he said and released some spiritual energy, forming two similar, but very different balls of water out of it. With one he focused on the ‘feeling’ of the spell which he would be using to defend himself, while the other he created as if he was trying to bring forth a miniature version of the Ascent of the Storm, though without the Aspects or the Principle of Energy.
“They really are different,” Laien said with a weak laugh. Had he really been doing all of that without even realizing?
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“See, told you,” Yin said with a chuckle. “It’s much easier for spiritual practitioners to gain insights into the Profound Mysteries of the Elemental Laws, but martial practitioners have their own advantages. I should be fairly powerful due to who I am… but I am still too weak to even use it,” he mentioned mysteriously and stuck out his tongue playfully when he sensed Laien’s curiosity; he would be keeping this one thing a secret for now.
“Buuu…” Laien complained, but he smirked the next moment. Yin was much stronger than him and his innate talent was surely not less than his own, but that was what made Yin a great rival and someone he could truly look up to! The two of them might have only met recently, but he already couldn’t imagine spending his time without having Yin around.
“Come on, help me out with that,” Yin brought up with a smile and handed over a portion of the vegetables along with a knife to Laien. “At this rate, we will never get this dinner done, the water is already boiling too. It will take time for the meat to cook itself too,” he said with a laugh. As martial practitioners, neither of them would have any issues even if they were to skip a meal after a whole day of exerting themselves, but they were still young; it was better for their bodies if they ate well and slept at least seven, eight hours per day.
“Yeah, let’s finish this up and eat some light snacks meanwhile,” Laien agreed and suggested. He could tell Yin had nothing against the idea, so the two of them brought out some of their favorite sweets and drinks in small amounts. By the look of it, both of them had been taught not to be too gluttonous with their food.
The two of them passed the time chatting about mainly casual, not too important things. Meanwhile, Yin kept checking if the meat was already soft enough until finally, the bullion was ready. They poured a generous amount of it into their bowls and started eating, enjoying the moment of leisure.
“It’s really good,” Laien licked his lips and stopped gulping down the soup for a very brief while. “All those spices made it taste great. I wish I knew how to properly add them up to make the end result be so good,” he praised before going back to devouring the contents of his bowl. Who knew something that wasn’t made in a restaurant or by a professional cook could taste so good?
“I can teach you, but I don’t know that much about cooking,” Yin said with a slightly embarrassed chuckle. Was this little thing really something to be so impressed about? The fact that he could tell what Laien was feeling was really beginning to be a little strange… but all in all, not bad at all.
“Yup, would be great.” Laien nodded with a grin. “Say, it’s nice and cool outside during the night, so how about we sleep here instead of going to the inn?” he proposed, personally too tired to even consider doing any kind of training before having a good, long nap.
“I’m up for it,” Yin agreed easily, the idea looking quite interesting to him. They would have more than enough chances to sleep in inns, but today the weather was so nice it would be a waste not to sleep under the stars and the moon; though they would probably only see them when they woke up in the middle of the night.
“Mm, they do seem to have a simple bath just around here, but…” Laien brought up with a laugh, not feeling like going to sleep without washing himself. He smirked, then stored his clothes away into the interspatial ring and took out some liquid soap and shampoo from within it. He then concentrated a little and caused quite a bit of water to appear, mixed it with the soap and shampoo and held his breath. It took him about twenty seconds to clean himself perfectly, after what he shot the water far away, splashing it across a large area. He had already seen what too much soap does to greenery, so he knew it shouldn’t be just thrown at one spot.
“Aaand all done,” he said with a laugh and withdrew some light clothes to sleep in, making them appear directly on his body. He glanced at Yin and raised his eyebrows slightly; the two of them chuckled simultaneously, then Yin removed his clothes. Yin needed to admit that being a water-element practitioner was quite convenient; Laien didn’t even need to spend much time washing if he didn’t feel like it.
After getting washed by Laien, Yin laughed to himself and similarly put on some light clothes. He then added more wood to the bonfire, making sure it would burn nicely at least for four or five more hours. In the meantime, Laien took out a thicker blanket made of animal fur and placed it on the ground, then added a thinner white blanket and two fluffy pillows on top of it. He had been camping outside fairly often in the past two years, so he had all the equipment prepared.
With everything they needed to do done, the two of them laid down and for the time being, covered themselves hallway up with the white sheet and began chatting while looking at the dancing flames of the bonfire. Soon enough though they got sleepy and stopped talking. A moment later, they were already asleep.
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Around the late evening, when it was already beginning to grow dark outside the remaining six members of the escort arrived at the inn. They thought they would be able to arrive a few hours after those three who went to hurry ahead, but the road proved to be more difficult than they had thought; they ended up taking about sixteen hours, what caused the particular one of them to grow incredibly frustrated.
“Oi, Liza. Look there to the right, behind the inn. It’s those brats,” the man riding at Liza’s side said as they were riding into the courtyard. “Don’t tell me they actually kept up with that freak? What do you think?” the man wondered loudly, his gaze stopping for a second longer at the bonfire near the two sleeping boys.
“Don’t be stupid Jin. How could that be true? I bet Ruan arrived here long before them; they probably came here two hours ago at best,” Liza said sourly and have her partner an angry look. How could two kids easily traverse this damned mountain road as fast as a courier could? Jin could sometimes say so unreasonable things.
“Stop staring them and get your ass moving, I want to eat something and get some good sleep before tomorrow,” Liza said resignedly and jumped off her War Horse, then led it to the stables in order to quickly groom it and be done with those boring necessities. She couldn’t be sure if her mount wouldn’t run away if she left it alone, so she had no choice but to muss its fur up manually, clear its hooves and lock it up within a relatively comfortable building so it wouldn’t want to wander around.
She also couldn’t help but notice that Ruan and those two kids had left their horses free, but she really didn’t want to get even angrier by thinking about it. However, when that grey-cloaked silent man did the same and headed inside the inn, she couldn’t not groan inwardly. Why did well-trained war horses cost so much? How could a normal person ever pay up so much money?
“Did you notice how those two were sleeping?” Jin brought up when he and Liza entered the small stables. “They were totally hugging each other, do you think they are into ‘those’ things?” he wondered with a smile, a strange glimpse flashing past his eyes as he thought about the scene.
“Tch, you and your gross interests,” Liza commented with a frown. Although she technically was going out with Jin, for the time being, it was mainly because of his good looks and how good he was in bed. If she were to pay attention to his character and especially this ill interest he had in the youths of both genders... she would definitely not be associating herself with him. However, she didn’t care about those things; she wasn’t looking for a husband, she only wanted a company and a satisfying bedtime.
“Haha, come on, why are you so uptight? Didn’t you want to get back at those two a little? We could have some fun with them, or I could if you aren’t interested,” Jin said with a laugh, not minding Liza’s displeased expression. “And what are you three looking at?” he barked at the three guards from the Valius family, noticing the kind of glances they were giving him. As he saw it, a group of trashes who couldn’t even reach the Realm of Heroes wasn’t qualified to be interacting with him or expressing their opinions about his person.
“Pipe down you dimwit and stop thinking with your dick,” Liza spoke angrily and glared at Jin disdainfully, wondering how could he be so stupid. “Making it hard for those two is one thing, but assaulting them would be another story. Do you want to try having a Great Master pull your insides out through your asshole, huh? If not, you’d better forget about making any strange moves on them,” she advised realistically, then turned on her heels and left the stables. She wasn’t fond of those two brats, but it didn’t mean she would screw herself over by actually harming them in any meaningful way.
“Oh Lizzy, why so harsh? You don’t believe they would be willing to have some fun with the elder brother here?” Jin followed Liza out and asked self-confidently. He had already seduced quite a few young noblewomen, so he couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t be able to do the same to two clueless boys.
“You are retarded. Come, I think it’s the highest time to wring you dry before you do anything inconvincibly stupid. I could use some stretching before the meal,” Liza said helplessly and amorously at the same time. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, so she grabbed Jin by his arm and led him inside the inn.
The three guards from the Valius family exchanged worried looks. They had heard everything those two said, but Liza and Jin seemed not to care if they listened in or not. They unanimously decided they would warn the boys in the morning and for the time being, headed to eat something and to rest for the night.
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More or less as Laien expected, he woke up in the middle of the night. He breathed in slowly and deeply, lazily listening to the sounds of theslowly burning out bonfire. Even before he opened his eyes, he realized in what kind of position he and Yin were sleeping in. “When did we end up hugging?” he wondered, unable to prevent an amused smile from sneaking onto his face.
“You awake, right?” Yin said quietly, chuckled and hugged Laien tighter. He had been reminded how comfortable and nice it was to snuggle close with a person he liked by none of than Laien, so he was in no hurry to get up and start training. He wanted to enjoy the moment for a little longer.
“Yup,” Laien confirmed with a laugh. He was very much of the same mind as Yin about staying like that for a bit longer, but he was also very much looking forward to his usual training routine. He couldn’t wait to spar with Yin and talk some more about their respective insights later on.