Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 85. The News of Mustafa.
Eight hours later. Nightfall, at the open grounds before the walls of the mountain Fortress-City of Lugna.
With Sirius nodding off outside at the coachman’s seat, Jasmine sighed quietly from the inside of the carriage. Albert went to help with organizing all the five thousand people with the next few days in mind, Johan and Arslan were sleeping, Kasha and Reian were both fully focused on training, while Laien and Yin were still unconscious… or by this point, would it be more correct to say they were simply sleeping too?
“Eh.” Jasmine sighed again. “Seeing those two train so hard makes me want to try again too. But, how can I advance after being pretty much stuck for nearly two centuries? My body and my insights simply aren’t suitable for any heavy-handed attacks. Usually, I can compensate for it easily with my speed, agility and magic… but in those situations where I’m forced to protect someone, I’m truly like… a bird caught in the mud,” she mused rather discontentedly. However, she smiled in the end, amused by the comparison she made about herself.
“I might as well spend some time training, it’s not like I have anything better to do,” she murmured quietly, but before that, she swept everyone inside the carriage with her gaze one more time. The golden-haired young man, the black-haired young woman and four boys; two of them sitting in meditation, four of them lying down on the soft blankets and pillows. All of them appeared so calm in their stillness, making it quite hard to believe that not even half a day ago, they had been in the middle of a desperate struggle for their lives.
“It always amazed me how quiet and still the world would become after a battle,” she mused quietly, trying to relax and enjoy the moment; if she really wanted to train, then she at the very least needed the right state of mind. She knew very well that forcing herself to train with a half-hearted attitude would result in nothing but wasted time. “Wind sure is strong in the mountains. It’s a good thing Lugna is located in the highest point of a valley,” she thought a bit absentmindedly and looked out of the window, without bothering to move the dark curtain.
She had read about the Fortress-Cities of the Ruishi Republic, but it was the first time she was seeing one. The city itself wasn’t all that amazing; it was surrounded by a high and thick layer or walls and from what she knew, it was a place where two hundred thousand people lived. However, if one wanted to conquer this city, then unless a truly elite unit was employed, it would be futile without overwhelming superiority in numbers and strength. It had taken them merely eight hours to arrive at this place, but it was only thanks to Julien leading them through the more reclusive paths; a regular army, even with a good map, would find it hard to traverse this terrain effectively.
With the number of outposts, the guerrilla warfare the defenders who were familiar with the area could employ would be enough to stop almost any army. The Fortress-City of Lugna wasn’t an easy place to live by any means, but its geographical advantage made it nearly impossible to assault.
“No wonder no one dared to invade the Ruishi Federation in the last two thousand years,” Jasmine thought to herself, listening to the gusts of wind and to the muffled noises made by those of the five thousand people in their caravan who didn’t yet go to sleep. “Someone is coming?” she murmured, sensing a strong but reserved aura of a person that was approaching their carriage. Although she was a bit unwilling, she rose up from her pillow and got out into the cold of the night.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t have come?” the grey-haired young man, Julien, asked with a smile when Jasmine came out of the carriage.
“Perhaps,” Jasmine replied and returned the smile. “If you want to talk with little master Arslan, then it’s a bad time; he’s asleep,” she explained without getting into the details. Technically, she fully expected Arslan to wake up soon since he had been sleeping for almost eight hours already, but she didn’t want him to immediately jump into a conversation with Julien. She wanted him to rest a little longer.
“I guessed that much,” Julien responded with a quiet laugh. “He’s surely worried about his father and those friends of his. I’m not planning to pester him before those two things are solved,” he assured. He was quite impatient to learn the details of how Yimar Furi and his men had been defeated by Arslan’s group, but he wasn’t senseless enough to force himself onto Arslan. Rather than that…
“Then why did you come?” Jasmine inquired. It had already been decided they would spend the night here, then head to the Capital City of Barn. Did something new come up? News of Mustafa, maybe? “No, that’s unlikely. He would have mentioned it immediately instead of chit-chatting.”
“To eat the cookie and still have the cookie,” Julien said with a playful smile, but when he saw a frown appear on Jasmine’s face, he hurried to explain. “I wondered if I couldn’t hear about that battle from someone else, for example from you.”
“… Huh?” Jasmine was at a loss for words. Was this man serious? He acted all thoughtful saying he wouldn’t pester Arslan, yet in reality, he didn’t intend to wait and simply opted to ask someone else for the story? Was this how a responsible adult acted? Hadn’t he already told Arslan that they would talk later? Did he intend to just say ‘Never mind, I’ve talked about it with one of your guards.’ or something like that when Arslan asked him about this matter the next day?
“Well… maybe I’m oversensitive,” she assumed after a moment. She smiled resignedly and shook her head; having a chat with this young General would be a more pleasant way to spend the night than to try and achieve the impossible. She knew her own limits very well; she wouldn’t grow stronger by spending one night, or even ten thousand nights on training.
“I guess we can talk,” she conceded with a smile. “As long as you take out some good drinks, that is,” she added wryly and laughed in a surprisingly enticing manner.
“Of that you can rest assured,” Julien said with a merry laugh and in spite himself, blushed slightly. Having spent most of his life training and studying in the military, he wasn’t all that used to talking with women, especially ones as beautiful like this long-haired brunette in front of him.
“Mm,” Jasmine nodded slightly, feeling quite happy about Julien’s cute reaction. “How about we join one of those large bonfires?” she suggested after a second of consideration. It would be rather embarrassing considering her own poor performance, but she thought it would be good to spread the story to more people. “Still, I shouldn’t use the actual names of those two,” she mused, thinking about the future consequences of her actions.
After all, she didn’t want to play the role of a scheming old witch and ‘accidentally’ cause those two to become sworn enemies with a large portion of Ikarians. Given the character of those boys, she trusted them to stand on Arslan’s side without her needing to resort to such petty machinations… and if anything, she was quite sure the effect of any forceful machinations on her part would bring the exact opposite of the outcome she desired to happen.
“Fine,” Julien agreed happily. “Give me a while, I will invite a few of my officers and friends to join us,” he requested and after receiving a nod from Jasmine, he ran back to the city.
This behavior of Julien’s, in turn, prompted Jasmine to chuckle in amusement. Sometimes, young men were far too similar to boys in nature. However, it wasn’t something she disliked or found to be worth scorn; if she looked at herself, she too more often than not didn’t quite behave her age.
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“Umh,” Yin let out a muffled groan as he began walking up. His body felt unnaturally stiff and it was tingling all over. He remembered being almost killed by the attacks of all those martial masters, then receiving an arrow to the heart and fainting, so he was quite nervous at first. However, after taking a moment to figure out what was going on with his body, relaxed considerably. He discovered that the weird tingling sensation came from the strange mixture of accumulated fatigue and energized vitality within him; to his surprise, he also discovered that his cultivation leaped from the early ninth mortal realm to the mid ninth mortal realm and given how restless his Qi was, it likely wouldn’t take him long to make another breakthrough.
He shivered a little as he remembered the pain from before he lost consciousness, yet he smiled afterward when he thought about the benefits it brought him. He didn’t open his eyes yet, but he could easily tell that Laien was laying just beside him. Since the two of them were here, in what most likely was the same carriage they had grown used to in the past week, then they must have won that battle. It had been a risky bet on his part to use his own body as a shield for Laien, but it paid off splendidly.
After taking some time to get used to the weird state his body was in, he opened his eyes and sat up slowly. Then, he laughed a little. It looked like everyone was resting or training, so somehow he came to be the only one ‘awake’ in the carriage. “Oh?” He noticed the twin swords of his on the blankets to his right, along with a sole red-stone interspatial ring. He smiled and extended his hand, intending to store the three objects away… but stopped midway and laughed.
“They are on the wrong hands,” he noted lightheartedly and quickly swapped the two golden interspatial rings, then placed one of the twin swords into each of the two. “It’s nice of them not to have removed my Qi imprint,” he mused with a smile and proceeded to inspect the red-stone interspatial ring. Within it, he found two more identical top-grade rings and dozens of high-grade rings. Apart from that, he discovered a great amount of Euleanian platinum coins and Arkarian diamond coins, in addition to which there were countless various items, be it weapons, luxurious things for daily use, alcohols and even cultivation methods, including seven top-level martial art manuals.
“There’s the Grand Spell chant too, along with quite a few books about magic. Laien will surely be happy to see that,” he thought merrily and just as he began wondering when Laien would wake up, his vision blurred and for a second. He felt incredibly lightheaded, as if his body didn’t know where if it was sitting or lying down, but the sensation disappeared fairly quickly, leaving him pretty bewildered. He glanced at Laien’s face, who in turn seemed to have sensed his gaze and opened his eyes; by the looks of it, he woke up just a second or two ago.
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“Haaa… we are alive,” Laien said with a sigh of relief. This time, it had really been too risky. It wasn’t ‘about to get risky only to work out in the end’ like all those other times, but it very much literally almost killed both of them. Their luck… how far could they keep pushing it before one or both of them ended up dead?
“It wasn’t all bad,” Yin mentioned in a seemingly random manner as Laien was lifting himself to a seating position. “It’s gotten stronger… I can almost hear his thoughts even when I’m not concentrating. Was that strange feeling from before due to that too?” he wondered quietly, but his train of thought got suddenly interrupted when Laien moved closer and hugged him.
“It was scary,” Laien whispered in a very soft voice. “This time, it was really scary,” he repeated, his voice carrying an unusual hint of weakness in it. He had fought life-or-death battles before, but this was the first time he had gotten so close to dying. Just recalling that wild energy forcing itself into his body, threatening to erupt it from within made him tremble like a leaf. He was sure that if he hadn’t ignored his limits and struggled to heal Yin, he would have burst apart like a rotten tomato.
Ironically, it was the thing that he was feeling the most guilty about that saved his life. He would have never forgiven himself if Yin died and he survived… he thought he had learned his lesson in Neil City, when Siana almost died to an attack of that martial master from the Cail Family, but… eh. Acting according to one’s heart… it wasn’t as simple as he had thought it to be. One simple action could have a multitude of consequences, it was something he was beginning to realize only now.
“We are both alive, so isn’t it okay?” Yin asked quietly, hugging Laien tightly with his eyes half-closed. Then, he laughed a little when he though the old him would have never said something like that; the old him would have never considered putting someone dear to him in harm’s way just to help other, unrelated people. The current him, however, came to value living while staying true to himself more than just existing with no reason or purpose. Had there not been someone who said something similar?
‘It’s better to live one day as a lion, than a hundred years as a sheep.’
Being consoled by Yin, Laien began feeling pretty embarrassed about himself. He breathed out slowly and attempted to relax, all the while still leaning against Yin’s body. He didn’t need to say anything, nor did Yin need to speak any more; now that he had calmed down, he became strongly aware of Yin’s emotions and to an extent, thoughts. He could tell that Yin was quite shaken by that battle too, but unlike him, Yin kept his cool and didn’t allow his emotions to overflow in such a shameful manner. Truly, had he shown himself like that before anyone else but Yin, he would have died of embarrassment.
“Hrm?” Laien frowned a little. “What did I not notice…?” he questioned in his thoughts, wondering what Yin meant. His face was still feeling incredibly hot, just like the rest of his body; he had trouble focusing, so it took him a whole moment before he realized that a change had once again occurred within his soul; and not only within his.
“Should I laugh or cry?” Laien wondered with a helpless smile. “That’s the Aspect of Humility, it’s foundation is half-complete. And that feeling coming from Yin’s soul… it should be the Aspect of Tranquility,” he mused while chuckling deep inside. What was that, a consolatory prize? He knew such thoughts were silly since by this point, he understood much more about the Aspects than in the past, but the ridiculousness of this random thought was making him want to laugh regardless.
Meanwhile, as Laien and Yin were slowly calming down, Reian and Kasha both kept their eyes closed and maintained neutral looks on their faces. The two of them had been training, but they weren’t in any deep state of enlightenment; they came back to awareness the moment Yin sat up. However, because they didn’t speak up immediately, they ended up witnessing something embarrassing. Thus, as to not make everything too awkward, they continued pretending to have seen nothing.
As the minutes went on, Laien and Yin changed into their original clothes and seated themselves comfortably by one of the carriage’s walls. They rested their backs on fluffy pillows, then exchanged a glance and smiled at each other. Since they felt like doing so, they held their hands together while blushing a little. However, they relaxed soon thereafter, as they spread their aura and sunk into the Combined Spiritual Realm.
Just like that, two more hours passed in the blink of an eye and in a relative silence. Having finished the main part of their daily routine, Laien and Yin simply sat in the same spot without talking aloud. The two of them continued training leisurely, but since the pure energy-related training required little to no attention at the cultivation level they’ve reached, it could be said that they were pretty much resting.
After a dozen or so more minutes, Arslan shifted from one side to another. This time, however, he didn’t go back to sleeping; he stretched with a slight moan, then rubbed his eyes before sitting up. His gaze was quickly drawn to the spot where Laien and Yin had been lying at, only for him to perk up when he noticed them gone. He looked around and sure enough, spotted the two glancing at him with smiles on their faces.
“!” he almost cried out in joy but refrained himself from doing so at the last second. He wouldn’t want to wake Johan up or disturb Reian or Kasha in their training, after all. Though, his self-control went to waste the next instant, when he stood up and rushed over to Laien and Yin and jumped out to hug them. Although the clatter that resulted from his careless landing right between Laien and Yin, and partially on top of their legs, wasn’t all that loud, it proved to be enough to wake Johan up and certainly, it was more than enough to get Reian and Kasha’s attention and for them to open their eyes.
With Arslan holding onto both of their shirts, looking unsure if he should jump to the right or to the left, Laien and Yin chuckled and both leaned forward. They lifted Arslan up and hugged him together. At the same time, they wondered if this happened to be a national hugging day or something of this kind, especially since Johan was looking at them with puppy eyes.
All in all, after Johan joined them, the four of them went from hugging to wrestling and playing around. Since they all had interspatial rings of their own, with Johan having gotten one from Laien a few days ago, they all ate some sweets, some normal food and drank… well. Arslan preferred water, like usual, Johan liked to drink juice while Laien and Yin liked the delicate fruit wines.
Overall, they continued to chat, play, eat and drink for about half an hour with Reian and Kasha observing from the side. When the four of them had let some steam off, they stopped fooling around as much and after another moment, Arslan brought up with a bit downcast look on his face.
“I hope my father is all right…”
As a result of this mention, Laien and Yin inquired what it was all about. Arslan then told them the same thing Julien told him about in the afternoon, then let out a quiet sigh. He loved his father very much; he didn’t know what he would do if the rumors of his father’s death proved to be true.
“I can’t imagine him dying so easily,” Laien said confidently. He remembered the scene when Mustafa killed off Tashakir, a powerful martial master of the fifth rank, with a flick of his hand. If this man were to use his full strength to fight with a proper weapon in hand… would there really be someone capable of killing him? It might seem simple in principle, but to kill a supreme martial master was easier said than done. Had it been so easy, those experts wouldn’t be recognized as the respective central pillars of support of each country that existed on the continent.
“I think so too,” Yin supported. In his case, however, he wasn’t making a fully rational argument like Laien. Since they had just overcome a great challenge, he had a feeling that the world wouldn’t punish them with additional misfortune… though he needed to admit before himself that this way of thinking was perhaps a little bit too optimistic and wishful.
“Yeah, thanks,” Arslan said with a slight smile, this time consciously avoiding the word ‘hope’. He didn’t want to keep repeating this one word over and over; for some reason, he came to feel like it would become a bad omen and bring him bad luck.
“Want to play cards or some other games?” Johan suggested in a somewhat shy manner. “It’s a good way to pass time if you don’t want to think too much…” he mentioned and looked at the faces of his friends. He wasn’t happy about it, but he had some experience with passing an unpleasant time in a way that would be the least stressful. In this case, when the options were to stay here or go out and join the people by those bonfires in the distance, he saw the former as a far better option.
Arslan wondered for a few seconds, apparently trying to make a choice between the same two options Johan had in mind. “Mm, I’d rather stay here,” he said and gave Laien and Yin a questioning look. If the two of them wanted to go out, then he would tag along, but only in that case would he do so.
“I’m good here.”
“Me too.”
Laien and Yin replied without thinking about it for too long. They had had enough intense experiences for the time being and their bodies needed some time to recover, so they weren’t eager to go out and train physically either. The interior of this carriage was incredibly cozy and comfortable, to a surprising extent even; spending time here was pretty fun and pleasant for them. The company of Arslan, Johan and sometimes Albert only further bettered the time they spent in there.
With the four youths having settled on remaining, Reian and Kasha calmly returned to training. Since the boys weren’t going out, they didn’t need to follow them around; this development suited them very much. Reian was happy with it in particular, as he would need at least a week to get rid of all the internal damage he had suffered. If he was a bit lucky, then this process would also quickly lift him up to the fourth Realm of Heroes; it wasn’t a surprise that he wanted to focus on training.
The time flew by and the night passed quickly. Soon, the first rays of sun began peeking out from above the mountains towering over the back of the Fortress-City of Lugna. Within one particular carriage, two adults were still training while four young boys were napping after the whole night of playing games and enjoying themselves.
The whole area in front of the great walls of Lugna was fairly quiet. Only a few dozen people stayed behind around the last of the large bonfires, while the rest had gone to sleep. It was at this time when the Qi-enhanced yell of an incoming rider resounded clearly throughout the valley.
“Mustafa lives! Mustafa lives! The White Guard destroyed the City of Masalle! Mustafa is alive! The war is at a stalemate!”
The rider shouted the moment he spotted Julien and a few of the high-ranked officers beside him. He knew he was the first one delivering the news as all the common message birds and flying magical beasts alike had disappeared from the skies and all the new ones failed to reach even the closest destinations. The rider, just like the very majority of the subordinates Julien had gathered around himself, hated most of the Ikarians with passion; the only exception was the people of Makarash! It wasn’t strange for him to be excited while delivering this joyous news.
“So he lives after all,” Julien said with a wide, bloodthirsty smile. He couldn’t wait to learn the details of the report.
“He lives,” Jasmine said in a low voice. She took a deep breath, then let the air out, slowly. Yes, Mustafa wouldn’t have gotten himself killed so easily. “There they come,” she thought with a smile, watching Arslan and the rest rush out from the faraway carriage.
“General,” the rider brought his horse to an abrupt stop and greeted Julien. “The situation in the west…” he began saying but was silenced by a wave of a hand of Julien’s. He was confused at first; he knew his General well enough to know he wouldn’t care about time and place and would always impatiently ask to at least be briefed in before moving to talk somewhere else. However, he did realize what was going on when he followed Julien’s line of sight and saw a group of boys accompanied by two men and a woman running over.
“Is that true? Is my father alive?” Arslan forced himself to ask in a loud voice despite being short on breath.
After a second, the rider’s eyes went wide when he comprehended the meaning of Arslan’s words. He didn’t know that Mustafa’s son was a guest of their General’s! “That is true indeed. I saw the Grand Yimar Mustafa with my own two eyes before I headed out,” he said respectfully, the high esteem he held Mustafa in extending to the person of his son.
Hearing so, Arslan was so relieved that he almost fell on his butt due to all the stress leaving his body all at once. His father was alive…!
Julien smiled at Arslan, then gestured the rider to get off his horse and come closer. When the man did as he was ordered, he said.
“You know what I want. Skip the flowery language and describe the situation to us in as much detail as possible.”