Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 68. The Grey-White Mist.
“Will they be able not to wake anyone up?” Arslan wondered aloud. Was it really possible to enter a village and leave it so easily? Wouldn’t someone by on guard against thieves or bandits at least?
“They should be fine,” Jasmine responded as the first one. “The period of time when the night is about to end is when people’s sleep is the deepest. I doubt the villagers expected any danger to appear either, so they aren’t likely to be sleeping with one eye open. As long as no one makes too much noise, going in and out of the village should be easy enough,” she explained casually. She would have added that it might have been the job of the people they killed to be on the lookout, but having seen their behavior she could only assume that they were incredibly careless and cared not about anyone coming to attack or rob their village.
Seeing the unconvinced look on Arslan’s face, Reian laughed and pointed out with a wry smile. “Even if they do wake someone up, what do you think will happen? Do you think someone who’s sleepy will bother to get off his bed and actively confirm that everything is all right? Those people expect some noise in the morning when their fellow villagers will be returning from the hill. We would be extremely unlucky if anyone decided to get up and check the situation.”
“Hmm,” Arslan thought about what Reian said for a bit, then tried to put himself in those villagers’ shoes. “Yeah, it should be okay like you are saying,” he said and nodded in agreement. Jasmine’s explanation was a bit unclear to him, but he understood what Reian said with ease. It made sense for the villagers not to be on guard when they expected their elites to make some noise in the morning.
“Well, for the time being…” Laien murmured and walked away to the side. He seated himself below one of the trees and closed his eyes, quickly sinking into a shallow state of meditation. Although he was quite sure that half of his Qi and spiritual energy would be enough to accomplish what he wanted, he preferred not to be left with some last fumes afterward. Thus, he intended to use those minutes to recover some of his strength and avoid an annoying headache later on.
Yin looked around himself, then smiled slightly. He separated from the group and seated himself near Laien, seeing nothing better to do at the moment.
Following that, Arslan glanced at Laien and Yin one time, then a second time… and then went to join the two.
“Honestly…” Reian shook his head with a helpless smile. It was making him feel somewhat lonely to see Arslan choose to hang out with those two boys instead of with him. He understood that one of the goals of this journey was for Arslan to make some friends his age, but since it was explicitly Laien and Yin who were in question he couldn’t help but worry. It hadn’t even been two days, but he was beginning to doubt whether Arslan would listen to him or to Laien if a choice needed to be made.
“You needn’t worry so much,” Sirius commented in a tone full of appreciation. “I don’t know about that Yin kid, but I have a really good feeling about that Laien boy. I trust he will grow up to be an admirable and amazing person,” he said with a calm smile, his gaze wandering towards Laien.
“You sure seem to have a high opinion of him,” Reian mentioned, genuinely surprised by Sirius’s attitude. This old man was known to be unbelievably whimsical and hard to please, and yet he became fond of that boy so quickly... it was almost unthinkable.
“I certainly do.” Sirius laughed in amusement. “I can see that both you are Jasmine are worrying over little master Arslan and his relationship with those two, but I assure you that the Laien boy isn’t an evil person. He’s actually someone you would want to have as a friend the most. He has his own principles, he isn’t self-centered and by all means appears to value friendship. You might say I’m jumping to conclusions, but I think Jasmine understands what it means for an old man to have a good feeling about someone,” he suggested confidently and gave Jasmine a meaningful glance.
“I certainly do,” Jasmine admitted, albeit reluctantly. “My opinion of those boys was really good too…” she added, but didn’t finish as she could already guess what this old demon would say about her suspicions.
“You old witch, what useless thing did you come up with this time?” Sirius asked with a laugh, controlling his voice just enough for it not to reach the three little masters.
“The village,” Jasmine replied in a way that would have served only to confuse most people. However, Sirius, the millennia-old spiritual master certainly wasn’t amongst what ‘most people’ represented as the look of realization appeared in his eyes just from hearing those two words.
“Are you going senile before me?” Sirius asked teasingly, but when Jasmine’s face hardened he laughed and raised his hand in defense. “What I mean is, do you think that boy wants to go around the houses in this village and kill everyone with that spear he showed us? Didn’t you see his ice magic? Didn’t you see how many of those girls he healed? If you think he had shown us everything he has, you are dearly mistaken,” he said with a smile, personally looking forward to Laien presenting him with a nice surprise.
Jasmine squinted her eyes involuntarily. “You mean to say you think a twelve years old boy at the eighth mortal realm can unleash a spell powerful enough to wipe out a medium-sized village? Aren’t you the one who’s going senile here?” she asked with a frown. She knew Sirius was only trying to annoy her when he questioned her sanity, but she was starting to sincerely worry about him.
“No one said that,” Sirius laughed while shaking his head. “You are jumping to conclusions too easily. You are probably thinking something like ‘That kid must be a bloodthirsty monster since he didn’t immediately ask me, a fire-element spiritual master, to destroy the village. He must enjoy making a bloodbath and thus, he isn’t a person fit to be the little master’s friend.’, right? I’m telling you, wait and see what the boy intends to do and make up your mind about him after that,” he proposed, seeing this kind of solution as being the most reasonable.
Jasmine couldn’t help but get flushed after Sirius reprimanded her. There were sparsely any people older than her in the whole Arkaria, so she wasn’t used to having anyone speak to her in a condescending tone. Yet despite that, she could only see Sirius’s suggestion as a smart thing to do, so she was unable to refute him in any way. This left her feeling very frustrated.
As for Reian, who had been about to jump in to defend Jasmine in this battle of words, he lost all the train of thought when he saw Jasmine blush on the rare occasion. “Well, Sirius is being reasonable,” he thought quietly, his stance having suddenly taken a one hundred and eighty degrees change. His mind agreed with what Sirius was saying and now, the desire of his heart was satisfied too; he had no reason left to join the argument on either side.
Meanwhile, Kasha allowed herself to reveal a wry smile. “I used to think that teacher and those two are some otherworldly people, but they are just like the rest of us. They aren’t that different from me… and I’m not that different from the rest of the people,” she thought to herself, failing to realize that deep within her soul a mass of essence appeared and began taking the shape of a half-complete, omnicolored orb.
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Around the same time, the group of two dozen youths led by Sarah and Albert arrived in the village and began spreading out throughout it. Their presence alerted no one and they walked the streets freely, their figures lit up by the moonlight and the rare oil lamps located here and there. So far, everything was going according to Jasmine’s and Sirius’s words, and so Ruan and the others had nothing else to do than stand on the sides and watch.
“I will take care of the babies,” Albert said quietly while looking Sarah in the eye. “I was always better at making them not cry than you,” he said playfully and smiled, trying to lighten up the mood.
“Yeah,” Sarah nodded. It was as they had agreed to do long ago, so she saw no reason for Albert to be bringing it up again.
“Eh,” Albert sighed a little, seeing how he failed to dispel the grim expression on Sarah’s face. “You should think about it again. Are you sure you don’t want to bring your father with us?” he asked, knowing that despite all the contempt Sarah had for her father, she would definitely end up regretting it if she left him here to die, not to mention how Johan would react when he understood his sister had chosen to abandon their father for good.
“I’m not going to talk about it again,” Sarah replied coldly. “He’s the man who never did anything to protect mom, Johan or me. He doesn’t deserve to be saved,” she said, refusing to change her mind. Johan would understand her, she was sure of it. He was too gentle of a kid so he would be sad, but he would get over it quickly. Getting rid of that worthless father would be of benefit to both of them.
“… If that’s what you really want to do,” Albert conceded. “I’m going to bring my father. I will be back in a minute,” he said and after sending Sarah one last glance, he turned and left.
Sarah groaned inwardly. She knew Albert well, so how could she miss that he was angry with her? However, she also felt angry with him since he appeared not to understand why she detested her father so much. He would make excuses for him like ‘he doesn’t have the strength to change anything’ and ‘you know that resisting only makes everything worse’ and the one which always pissed her off the most, ‘it doesn’t really make that much of a difference if he rebels or not, since all we can do for each other is to stick together and lick each other’s wounds; you have me, so forget about your father’. Honestly, he would always cause her not to know whether she should be yelling at him or kissing him…!
“Eh, Albert is great, but he can’t see the big picture,” she complained to herself as she headed to the area where the houses of the parents of the three kids from their group were. “It’s all because of the people like my father that our country became this hellhole. Why do I need to forgive any of them or care about any of them now? They got what they wanted, now they can ‘live’ with it,” she told herself once again, trying to push down the feelings of guilt that stirred inside her heart.
Refusing to think about this matter anymore, Sarah did her part of the job and retrieved the four adults she was looking for without encountering any major issues. The only problem she was met with was the old man she was supposed to wake up, well, refusing to wake up. Thankfully, the houses in the village weren’t all that sturdy, so with the aid of her Qi, she had effortlessly broken into the old man’s house and after helping him collect some personal items, headed towards the hill.
However, just as she was walking out of the village with the four adults by her side, the door to the certain house opened and a skinny man in ragged clothes walked out of it.
“Sarah, thank God you look fine,” the skinny man said after running up to Sarah and the four adults. “I was so worried the whole time, I couldn’t sleep at all! Tell me what happened, and where are you going?” the man spoke quickly, and with each word spoken by him the look on Sarah’s face sank further.
“Why do you pretend to care now?” Sarah hissed through her teeth. She wanted to tell her father to screw off and go back to sleep, but after seeing him face to face she couldn’t bring herself to be so ruthless. “If you want to live, shut your mouth and follow me. Do not make any noise,” she said, her voice fuming with anger.
In contrast to the way he was being spoken to, the man nodded repeatedly with a broad smile on his face. He didn’t understand what was going on at all, but it didn’t matter to him. He was simply happy to see that his daughter was fine.
“You are the last one,” Ruan commented when Sarah appeared at the outskirts of the village with five adults accompanying her. He raised an eyebrow at Sarah’s grumpy face, but didn’t make any comments on her mystifying bad mood and instead turned around and headed up the hill.
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Sarah suppressed a sigh and followed the man. A moment later, when they arrived at the spot where everyone was waiting for them, she sent Albert a stern and meaningful glance.
Albert was, of course, surprised to see Sarah’s father, but after he noticed the glare Sarah sent him he wisely refrained from asking her any questions. Apart from him, no one else knew that Sarah had been planning to leave her father to death, so as long as she herself didn’t accidentally slip her tongue no one would learn anything. He knew how to keep a secret and although he felt sorry for Sarah’s father, he treasured Sarah much more than that placid father of hers.
“Everyone’s here, huh?” Laien opened his eyes and said with a slight smile. “They brought only about two hundred people in total,” he mused quietly. He had expected some more people to be brought, but considering that Sarah spoke about giving up on the converts, this result wasn’t all that unreasonable. “Oh well.” He snorted lightly and stood up, not pondering the matter anymore.
“How did you know they are all back?” Arslan asked curiously. Laien had been sitting with his eyes closed the whole time, so him ‘waking up’ at the exactly right moment was pretty surprising. Did Laien have some secret method to see without looking like his father did? But Laien was a water-element spiritual practitioner and not a wind-element practitioner, so it made little sense.
“I just guessed,” Laien said with a laugh and headed towards the group of three hundred, all the while resisting the urge to exchange a glance with Yin. The full truth was that he had simply sensed a subtle change in Yin’s thoughts and assumed it was because everybody had returned, though on the other hand what he told Arslan wasn’t exactly a lie either. The spiritual bond between him and Yin was incomparably stronger than it was in the beginning, but it didn’t seem like it would be possible for them to share their thoughts directly anytime soon, if at all. Thus, he didn’t lie when he said he had guessed when the right time was; he didn’t have the ability to read Yin’s thoughts, after all.
“Huuh,” Arslan ran after Laien and Yin, appearing to be unconvinced. “You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want,” he said with a bright smile. His father had made him promise not to tell anyone when before explaining the Wind Aura technique to him, so he was pretty sure that Laien also had a similar secret that he didn’t want to rashly reveal.
This time, Laien couldn’t resist exchanging a glance with Yin. The two of them smiled at each other, both of them thinking that Arslan was truly a precious child. In this case, Arslan was pretty much right, though his assumptions were probably going in the wrong direction; there were probably little to no people in the Starlight continent whose first assumption would be to think that the two of them shared a spiritual bond. Most people would think he had a special technique to scan his surroundings, be it aura-based or element-based.
“Oh, you must be the little masters this good man mentioned,” the man in ragged clothes turned to the three of them the moment they approached. “My name is Jacob, I’m Sarah and Johan’s father. I’d like to thank you very much for helping them and their pals,” he spoke politely and with a smile, but one way or another couldn’t avoid coming off as strangely ingenuine, especially to Yin and Arslan who were in their own ways exceptional judges of character.
Laien nodded slightly. He wasn’t interested in that man, so he didn’t bother to care about the problems related to him. “Could you get out of the way?” he asked in a neutral tone, seeing as Johan was blocking him from Jasmine and Reian.
Jacob bowed with the same, unchanging smile on his face and retreated to the side, seemingly remaining oblivious of the cold stare Sarah was sending his way. He chuckled nervously, feeling pretty stressed as the future of his family once again became uncertain. Yes, it was pretty bad in the village now, but they at least wouldn’t be killed if they did as they were told and didn’t resist. He had already lost his wife… he didn’t want to lose his children too because they insisted on fighting a battle that couldn’t be won.
“I have a request,” Laien said straightforwardly while looking at Jasmine. “If a wind suddenly stirs, please keep the cold air away from everyone here,” he requested and ended up unintentionally throwing Jasmine off as she had expected a different kind of a request to come.
“That won’t be a problem, but do you…” Jasmine began saying with a bewildered look on her face, but she could only groan quietly when Laien smiled at her and walked away. “Does he really have a way?” she asked aloud. Just considering the mere possibility caused a cold chill to pass down her spine; she had learned towards Sirius’s opinion of Laien having some smart means of dealing with this village, but after seeing the confident smile of his she was beginning to feel her conviction waver.
“As I said, let us wait and see,” Sirius said with a slight smile. “For the time being, the rest of you should back off and place yourselves behind this lady, unless you’re tired of living,” he added without doing as much as turning his head around, using his spiritual energy to send his voice in the correct direction.
What could be interpreted as a calm threat from Sirius caused some relatively quiet clamor to spread amongst the three hundred villagers. However, the disorder was swiftly brought back under control by a few words from Sarah and Albert who then proceeded to have everyone do as Sirius told them to.
“He didn’t walk too far away,” Jasmine pointed out and just in case, prepared to release her spiritual energy. The one hundred meters between them and Laien were negligible enough that if she failed to react quickly enough, then Laien’s ice magic could cause quite a lot of harm to those who were too weak to withstand the cold swept up by the wind.
“I wonder what he’s going to do,” Arslan mused aloud, gazing at Laien with eyes full of anticipation. He fully expected Laien to show them something amazing; he simply didn’t know how amazing it would be.
“Yeah, what is he going to do?” Sarah picked up on the question, moving to the front with Albert and Johan now that the calm had been restored.
“He’s going to use it,” Yin said randomly, looking at Laien with a somewhat jealous smile. They had spent the exact same amount of time on this aspect of training, but he had fallen behind Laien by half a step. It was a bit vexing, but regardless he felt happy to see Laien grow stronger.
Sarah wanted to ask what was Laien going to use, but she had an inkling that Yin wouldn’t answer this question and thus refrained from bringing it up.
“What is he going to use?’
Yet, Johan appeared not to have such concerns as he inquired without giving it much thought. His question remained unanswered though, just like Sarah thought it would.
One hundred meters ahead and just at the spot where the hill was beginning to descend more sharply, Laien took a few deep breaths and closed his eyes. “I have to make use of everything if I’m going to do it properly,” he thought almost absentmindedly, his consciousness sinking into his body and soul as he slowly and steadily roused his Qi and spiritual energy.
“First, get together,” he thought as he began drawing upon both energies within him. He controlled them through his Absolute Water Spiritual Domain and Absolute Water Martial Realm, pushing them together and mixing them in an effortless manner. “I wish I could fuse them instead of just mixing them, but the problem is I have no idea how to go about it,” he complained with a smile, then quietly reminded himself not to be too greedy. It was already enough that he had done something he had never heard being as much as being mentioned on the Starlight continent.
“Now for the whole rest of it.” He refocused and reached out to the innermost part of his soul. He pulled onto the essences of the Aspects which existed there and made use of the four of them to enhance his basic two energies. The three complete, omnicolored orbs and one half-complete orb stirred, releasing the essences of Tranquility, Wrath, Awareness and Compassion which intermingled and fused with one another and proceeded to flow in a continuous stream.
“Now slowly, slowly,” he murmured half-consciously, then started releasing his energy outside. Within his soul, a golden rune appeared as he drew upon his full insights into the Principle of Energy and began applying them to his Qi and spiritual energy, which quickly turned into a mass of dense, grey-white mist in front of his body. At the same time, the mist was naturally filled with the always-existing insights into the Elemental Law of Water which Laien had; it was filled with the Profound Mystery of the Tranquil Sea and the Profound Mystery of the Storm, what caused its overall strength to be raised be yet another qualitative level.
“Eh?” Just as Laien was about to go into the final step, he felt the Qi within his Qi Origin and the spiritual energy within his spiritual sea tremble ever so slightly. He had been scared of losing control at first, but he quickly realized that the change didn’t affect his magic directly. However, he could tell that both his Qi and spiritual energy underwent a substantial change; they were still in the vague shape of the water, as far as he could perceive them, but they felt a bit more ethereal and immaterial. It was nearly as if it…
“The Profound Mystery of the Mist?” Laien felt like laughing out loud, with each second sensing more clearly how powerful the Profound Mystery of the Mist was in comparison to the other two Profound Mysteries of the Elemental Law of Water he had perceived. If those two were to be called low-level Profound Mysteries, then he would confidently call the Profound Mystery of the Mist to be a high-level Profound Mystery if not a top-level Profound Mystery! He had a feeling that if it was developed to a high enough level, then it wouldn’t necessarily lose to the Profound Mystery of Inferno in terms of quality. That alone was a testament to how high-level the Profound Mystery of the Mist was.
“Hahaha, that’s going to make it all so much simpler.” Laien revealed a big smile and raised his hands up into the air. Within seconds, the area of a few meters that the grey-white mist covered expanded in size many times over and began lazily flowing down the slope of the hill, freezing everything in its path and leaving a layer of frost on all the greenery it touched upon.
This scene alone left the little over three hundred people behind Laien to let out a collective gasp. Yet, the ones who were the most astonished were not the villagers, but the four White Guards who all understood exactly how frightening that growing mass of grey-white mist was. They felt the aura of power coming from it very clearly and to their shock, that aura was not one whit inferior to one a talented spiritual master of the third or fourth rank would release.
“Now, for the final touch!” Laien thought excitedly and shifted a part of his focus onto the one ten-thousandth of the Spiritual Imprint that he had comprehended in a very small part while training with Yin. Still, that very small amount of comprehension allowed him to bring forth a sun-like Infernal Phantasm of the Profound Mystery of Inferno which he promptly used to enhance all the grey-white mist that was slowly flooding down the hill.
Although the Profound Mystery of the Mist and the Profound Mystery of Inferno were more or less comparable in Laien’s eyes, the degree of insights Laien had in the latter couldn’t be compared to that of the former. The instant the grey-white mist was filled with the Phantasmal Essence of the Profound Mystery of Inferno, it’s power surged like crazy at the cost of becoming borderline uncontrollable. Thankfully, there was no need for Laien to control the grey-white mist; all he needed to do was to release it continuously and allow it to fill the valley inside which the village was located.
“Wow…” Sirius exclaimed in a very unlike-him fashion, then laughed weakly as he stared at the mass of the grey-white mist with an utter amazement. He was a skilled water-element practitioner, but his accomplishments in the ice magic weren’t too high. Truth to be told, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to unleash an ice-based magic of this level even if he gave his all to do so. He was already so flabbergasted with what he was seeing that he failed to notice that Laien had omitted a chant of any kind; he would never have thought that in reality, Laien skipped the magic words entirely and still reached such a frightening degree of power.
“Reian, please pinch my arm and tell me I’m not dreaming,” Jasmine said half-jokingly, perhaps trying to deal with the lack of realism of the scene unfolding before her eyes. In her heart, she could only thank the Rala for the fact that normal wind would never affect the magic in a direct fashion. Was this mass of grey-white mist to suddenly change directions and start rolling towards them, she would have had serious trouble with protecting everybody without the time to chant a large-scale defensive magic.
“That boy… is he a spawn of an ice djinn?” Reian shook his head in disbelief; he was so astonished by what he was seeing that he didn’t quite hear what Jasmine said to him, what in itself was a testament to how badly he was shocked by the power displayed by Laien.
“I wouldn’t be surprised…” Kasha uttered with a weak laugh, but unlike the other three White Guards, she had a smile on her face. As expected, the boy that made her teacher recognize him so easily needed to be exceptional in all and every aspect.
“He’s growing stronger and stronger,” Ruan commented, his lips quirking into a self-mocking smile. He suspected he wouldn’t even last three exchanges against the current Laien and he was pretty sure that Yin could kill him in one blow; no matter how he looked at it, it was quite depressing.
“He’s going to freeze them all to death…” Sarah said, only realizing that her mouth had been hanging wide open when she moved it to utter the words. Johan and other villagers might not realize, but she could tell that if she as much as touched that grey-white mist, she would be turned into an ice-statue in the matter of split-seconds. She wasn’t even sure if martial masters would be able to withstand this frightening mist; she couldn’t help that the fact that it was being created by a child much younger than her filled with a sense of dread despite Laien being on their side.
As those on the hill marveled over and trembled upon the sight, the grey-white mist began covering the first buildings of the sleeping village. It moved without a sound, ever so slowly; it filled every nook and cranny and without fail, froze all in its path inside-out. The ground became as hard as stone, the water deep in the well turned into a mass of ice so quickly that its stone walls cracked apart. The windows of the houses were covered with a layer of white frost, while those inside the buildings hardened just like the ground, turning into lifeless ice statues, remaining in the same positions they had been sleeping in, never to wake up again.
The grey-white mist kept spreading and after a few minutes, it covered the entirety of the village, hiding it whole behind a layer of mist and fog. The mass of energy stabilized itself in the valley, transforming the whole area into a terrifyingly cold death field. The spell would begin losing its energy soon, but the cold would remain in the valley for much longer; in this windless weather, it was hard to tell just how long would it take for it to dissipate in a natural manner.