Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 88. Wasted Talent.
“It’s fine,” Laien said calmly while wrapping up the healing of Luca’s wound. He saw that the spectators, including General Julien and Luca’s older sister, halted when they saw that Luca regained his senses, so he spoke quietly. “I’ve fought against someone who had deep insights into the Aspect of Wrath before, so it’s not like I don’t understand how it is when one loses himself in his emotions. I sensed Desire and Pride in your magic too, both of which are hard to control… but what are the other two?” he inquired and chuckled a little at Luca’s startled expressions. Was it that strange for him to know about the Aspects, or whatever those insights were called in this part of the world?
“I was told they are called the Secrets of Envy and Greed,” Luca answered in a somewhat embarrassed fashion. Most of the time he tried not to think about it too much, but all the Secret Arts of his were related to negative emotions; Wrath, Desire, Pride, Envy, Greed, all of them were something he would consider to be a flaw in one’s character. However, since they were the sources of his strength, he couldn’t very well abandon them just because he thought they were wrong to cultivate.
“It was the first time I lost my senses like that in a fight… I’m really sorry,” he apologized again, feeling extremely guilty and at the same time, dispirited. Up until now, every time he lost he used the frustration of the loss to reinforce his desire to get stronger and improve… but after fighting Laien, he felt lost. He hated Chris for looking down on him and envied Raphael for ultimately winning against Chris during the finals of this year’s tournament, but he never felt he wouldn’t be able to overcome those two if he put in enough effort. Yet, against Laien… he had gone all-out, but it looked like he managed to merely scratch against the surface of Laien’s strength; to make the matters worse, his own strength was beginning to look like more like an obstacle than an advantage to him.
“Don’t sweat it so much,” Laien said with a smile. He could tell how bad Luca was feeling because of what he did, so he couldn’t bring himself to be angry with him. Had Luca been unapologetic and simply blamed his actions purely on the effects of his insights without the slightest care, he wouldn’t have been so understanding. However, since Luca approached him in an honest manner, he returned the favor and chose not to be petty about what had happened.
“Here, done.” Laien lowered his hand, having completely healed the wound on Luca’s shoulder. The gaping, bloodied hole and the cracked bones that had been present in the spot thirty seconds ago were now nowhere to be found. Instead, all that was left after the serious injury was a hole in Luca’s shirt that revealed a patch of smooth, undamaged white skin.
“Thank you,” Luca said gratefully. Not only had Laien not berated him for what he did nor looked down on him for losing, but he also healed his wounds. Now that he thought about how he had treated Laien in the beginning, he felt like dying of shame. The fact that Laien proved to be a respectable person, just like Raphael, only made the matter worse for his conscience.
“Mm,” Laien nodded slightly and revealed a playful smile. “If you want to thank me, do a good job as my guide,” he said with a slight laugh while looking Luca in the eye.
When Laien reminded him of the conditions attached to his loss, Luca let out a quiet, helpless laugh. “I will do my best,” he assured with a smile. He had lost so miserably that he was sure the results would be the same no matter if he fought Laien one hundred or one thousand times, so there was no way he would grumble about his new duties. The best he could do was to face them with a positive attitude.
“Are you two done talking?” Lea asked the moment Laien turned his gaze away from her brother and looked at her and Julien. They had been waiting a few dozen steps away for the two of them to finish before saying anything, but they were already on the verge of losing their patience.
“Yup,” Laien replied lightheartedly. He glanced at the downtrodden Luca, then left him to his own devices and headed back to where Yin and the rest of his companions were standing.
As he walked, Laien could tell that the way those high-ranked officers of the Fortress-City of Lugna were looking at him changed drastically. He was also vaguely aware of the excitement he had stirred on top of the walls, from which a few hundred soldiers had been watching the fight between him and Luca. Finally, there were the looks of veneration of those thousands of people who had left the carriages to spectate the duel and last but not least, the amazed looks on the faces of those five friends of Luca’s and his sister’s. The awareness of all those things made Laien feel fairly good about himself, but all in all, it wasn’t something he was overly concerned with.
“I can hardly believe it,” the youth that was around Lea’s age, around sixteen years old, said with a slight smile. “I’m three years older than Luca, but I will lose to him from time to time when we spar. Yet, you defeated him so effortlessly…” he praised, yet finished with a sigh; he looked like he wanted to say something else but chose not to. To gauge whether Laien was truly capable of what Jasmine claimed he had done would require pitching him against someone at the level of their General; no matter how he looked at this idea, it was inappropriate. Thus, he opted not to bring anything up.
“Yeah,” the eleven-year-old girl supported eagerly. “It nearly makes me believe that story about you and your friend,” she said with a cheeky smile. By the looks of it, she shared none of her older friend’s concerns and didn’t think much of bringing that story up.
Laien chuckled at the praise he was receiving and didn’t spare any comments toward the girl’s words. As he had already said, he cared little whether they believed the story about him or not. “Are we going to be leaving soon?” he asked, directing the question to Jasmine. Since she had spent the night outside, he assumed she would be the one knowledgeable about such details.
“Yes,” Jasmine replied. “In about an hour or so, unless that new guide of yours is going to need more time to prepare,” she added with a somewhat amused smile.
“Got it,” Laien said with a laugh, then approached Yin, Arslan and Johan. “I feel like eating something warm,” he mentioned with a smile and simply exchanging a look with the three. After Yin smiled back at him and the other two nodded in agreement, the four of them headed over to their carriage. Since no one stopped them while they were on their way, they arrived there just two minutes later and without wasting any time, they began making breakfast for themselves.
While setting the fire was the easiest part, it took them a few minutes to set everything up and get working on the ingredients. It certainly was convenient to have everything they needed on hand, in their interspatial rings, but the work of preparing something edible was unavoidable. As convenient as it was to carry something in an interspatial ring, it didn’t prevent the products from rotting or going bad, though it did slow the process down considerably. As such, the four of them busied themselves with cutting meat and various vegetables into pieces while the large frying pan and a pot full of water were steadily heating up over the fire. The simple mix of meat and vegetables perhaps wasn’t the tastiest thing in the world, but it didn’t taste bad by any means and was more than enough to fill their bellies when added to some noodles or rice.
Around the time the four of them were done with preparing everything and were just waiting for their food to cook itself, a bunch of people arrived and began setting up fires for their own food. Apart from the four White Guards who always were hanging around them, they were joined by Julien and two officers from Julien’s Cherubim, along with the group of seven youths from before that consisted Luca, Lea and their five friends.
A minute or so later, when all those present sat down in a circle around the fires they had set up, Julien spoke up in an official tone. “As that boy’s superior, I’d like to officially apologize for what happened. No matter the difference in strength, a behavior of this kind is unacceptable while sparring.”
Hearing another apology, Laien felt like rolling his eyes. “Give it a rest. Didn’t I already tell Luca that it’s fine?” he asked with a resigned sigh.
Julien was startled by Laien’s dismissive attitude, but in the end, he could only nod and give the matter a rest. He had been planning to go as far as to offer compensation to Laien… but apparently, Laien wasn’t nearly as angry as he had expected him to be; or rather, he wasn’t angry at all.
However, as far as anger went, there certainly was one person in this group that was extremely displeased at the moment.
“Tch.” Jasmine clicked her tongue. “If there’s someone who needs to apologize, it’s that boy’s teacher. What kind of a complete idiot is overseeing his spiritual practice?” she asked, clearly ticked off by the situation where a great potential was being wasted for no reason at all. As someone who had trained many generations of young elites in Makarash, she couldn’t bear to look at such an apparent example of extreme incompetency at best and intentional misconduct at worst.
“What do you mean by that?” Julien asked, honestly baffled by what Jasmine was saying. “Luca is training under an expert who had been delegated to our city from the capital some years ago. The man is a spiritual master of the sixth rank and he even has the same elemental affinity as Luca. How could anything be wrong there?” he explained doubtfully. Were it some other person than Jasmine saying so, he would have dismissed the idea instantly… but since it was her, he wanted to hear more about her reasoning.
“Ugh…” Jasmine groaned, then shook her head. “Don’t tell me you only have meatheads around here? Forget that incompetent teacher of his, any spiritual master who knows anything about cultivation should be able to tell that this kid had been training in a completely wrong way!” she admonished bluntly, giving Julien and his officers no face at all.
After Jasmine’s words sounded, it wasn’t only Julien and the two officers who were stunned. The expressions on the faces of Luca, Lea and the remaining five youths from their group turned either worried or became quite unsightly. Arslan and Johan were pretty shocked too, but as for Laien and Yin, the two of them were only a little surprised; they realized that Luca’s spiritual energy was subpar, but neither of them was familiar enough with spiritual practice to come to the same conclusions as Jasmine. Yin was a martial practitioner, while Laien was almost completely self-taught; it wasn’t strange for them not to have recognized the deeper problem at hand.
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“Could you please explain what you mean?” Luca couldn’t keep quiet anymore and butted into the conversation between Jasmine and Julien.
“Let me ask you this,” Jasmine said in a much gentler tone now that she was talking to Luca. “How much compression training are you doing?”
“Compression training…?” Luca asked anxiously. Was this something that he should know about? He could guess the purpose of this method from its name… and he had sometimes thought about the reason why his spiritual energy was so much worse compared to Raphael’s or Chris’s, but his teacher had always told him it was because his spiritual energy was innately weaker than theirs. Could it be that he had been lying to him? But why would he do that? He couldn’t understand it at all.
“As I thought,” Jasmine said with a heavy sigh. “The basic version of compression training for a spiritual practitioner is to empty himself from spiritual energy and allow it to be replenished in a natural way. Through that process, we can steadily increase the purity of our spiritual energy up to a certain point. I shouldn’t need to be saying so, but in your case, your spiritual energy isn’t nearly dense and pure enough since you’ve done none of that training. Even if you somehow manage to advance to the spiritual master level thanks to your broad insights, you will almost certainly be stuck at the first rank for the rest of your life,” she explained properly and with a clearly audible anger present in her voice. That teacher of Luca’s… she felt like punching him square in the face or worse.
Whereas Luca’s face went white soon after Jasmine finished her explanation, Julien unexpectedly tensed up and began leaking powerful killing intent. The murderous aura of his was strong enough to cause the seven youths to feel extremely uncomfortable despite not being directed at them. As for Arslan and Johan, however, the two of them weren’t affected nearly as bad since unbeknownst to them, Laien and Yin released their own auras and pushed the majority of the killing intent away.
“That bastard…!” Julien growled, clenching his fists so hard that his bones were cracking. “I’ll kill that bastard! I’ll send his head back to the capital in a basket…!” he hissed through his teeth, growing so furious that his Qi was beginning to seep out of his body and transform into sparks of lightning that danced all over his skin.
“General, please calm down! You can’t do that!” one of the two officers urged, though it was quite easy to notice that he was as angry as Julien. “Please remember who you are speaking about, General. If you kill one of the three Magistrates, the consequences will be terrible for all of us,” he reminded sternly. No matter how angry they were over Luca’s matter, they couldn’t arbitrarily attack and kill a Magistrate; they would all be accused of treason and likely sentenced to a capital punishment if they did that, regardless of the explanation they provided.
Julien sent his subordinate an infuriated glare, but after the two of them continued staring at each other stubbornly for a moment, he cursed and suppressed his Qi and killing intent. “Is there a way to make up for it? Does Luca still have a chance to train as he should have and not be handicapped in the future?” he asked Jasmine, bringing up the very question that Luca wanted to hear the answer to the most.
Jasmine took a deep breath, then instead of speaking to Julien, she gave Luca a serious look. “I will be honest with you. It’s going to be hard, very hard,” she began saying and seeing that Luca very much wanted her to continue and explain more, she went on. “First things first; you absolutely can’t allow your spiritual cultivation grow more than it already has. You are at the early ninth mortal realm, so keep it there. Suppress the advancement for as long as you can and while you are doing so, do the compression training for as long as it will bring results. If you are lucky enough, you should be able to train in this manner for around two years.”
“After you are done with that, you should advance to the middle of the ninth mortal realm in your spiritual cultivation and repeat the compression training in the same manner. This time, it should take two or three months at most. Then you should advance to the late stage; you will likely be unable to stop your cultivation from advancing to the peak, but there’s no reason to try and do that. Simply repeat the compression training again. After that point, the simple part will be over.”
“Having done all that compression training, you will be met with a choice,” Jasmine said very seriously. “No matter how good your innate talent is, you won’t be able to reach the degree of purity of your spiritual energy you would have reached had you been dutifully doing the compression training ever since you entered the first mortal realm. My guess is that if you are unlucky, you will have repaired about sixty percent of the damage that had been done and if you are lucky, about eighty to eighty-five percent. You can either choose to advance to the spiritual master level as you will be by that point, or…”
“Or, you can take the risk and attempt the Core Compression training that only the most talented spiritual masters are able to perform safely. In short, the Core Compression training is like its name suggests; you first deplete a portion of your spiritual energy, then use some of it to forcefully reduce the size of your Spiritual Core and force your spiritual energy to become purer in consequence. The biggest risk of this training method is that if you lose your focus even once during every Core Compression, your Spiritual Core will rebound. Spiritual masters can usually get off scot-free with some damage that will heal over the period of a few months, but a spiritual practitioner… well. I’d say that if you screw up, you will have about seventy percent chance to have your Spiritual Core permanently damaged and about twenty percent chance of it imploding and either crippling your spiritual cultivation permanently or killing you outright,” she explained very straightforwardly, making sure not to sugarcoat her words for Luca’s own sake.
As hopeful and eager as he was, Luca still couldn’t help but swallow heavily when Jasmine described the dangers of Core Compression to him. Seventy percent chance of damaging his Spiritual Core…? It was quite a frightening prospect, but if he wanted to ever fulfill his dreams and become a true expert, he would at the very least need to try the Core Compression once, just to see if he could somehow manage. He had always been dreaming of standing at the very top; he wouldn’t give up his ambitions so easily!
Seeing the determination painting itself on the Luca’s face, Jasmine decided to produce an interspatial ring, which she subsequently threw into the youth’s hands. “Inside, there’s a complete Core Compression manual compiled by the many generations of elite spiritual masters of Makarash. It should prove to be helpful to you, so try and make good use of it. Also, remember one thing; the moment you aren’t able to trigger another Core Compression, it means that your spiritual energy reached its absolute purest possible state. Do not try to start the process forcefully if your Spiritual Core seems to be about to be damaged when you are trying, else you will cripple yourself in the most pitiful way,” she advised, wishing that everything would work out for Luca. Maybe it was because she was too old already, but she couldn’t bear seeing a good youth with a great potential go to waste.
“I will make sure not to do that,” Luca promised, all the while trembling a little. The future he could see had become quite scary, but rather than to be frightened by the challenges awaiting him, he was immensely excited. Just thinking what would have happened to him had Jasmine not brought this matter up filled him with terror… and hatred. His teacher, Magistrate Patrick… he had begged him to be accepted as a disciple and finally managed to succeed after fulfilling the condition of entering the top three ranking in the tournament three years ago, but that detestable man did something so unimaginably rotten to him! One day, he would kill him with his own two hands!
Having noticed the killing intent surging within Luca’s eyes, Jasmine revealed a dangerous smile. She turned to look at Julien and inquired. “Is that boy’s master here in the fort? I would love to exchange a few words with him…” she mentioned in a somewhat dangerous manner.
“Jasmine, I don’t think you should…” Reian began saying but was soon cut off by an annoyed wave of Jasmine’s hand.
“Do you think I’m an impulsive idiot? I’m not planning to fight him,” Jasmine said with a slight snort but smirked a little soon afterward. “I only want to make sure that his reputation goes to hell and doesn’t recover anytime soon,” she added, causing Reian to feel rather helpless.
“You can’t,” Sirius stated outright and didn’t even flinch when Jasmine sent him an angered look. “Consider our position. We are relying on the Ruishi Federation to keep us and little master safe while Mustafa is dealing with the war. We can’t very well afford to cause a scandal and make enemies out of one of the three Magistrates. I don’t need to remind you that those three hold the same level of influence as Great Generals, do I?” he pointed out with a cool head.
Jasmine frowned discontentedly, but she didn’t argue with Sirius. Indeed, she had been a bit too impulsive just now. “I don’t like it.” Still, she grumbled despite having admitted that Sirius was right to herself. Some rumors could be spread and a case like Luca’s would be unlikely to repeat itself, but an outcome like that wasn’t nearly enough to sate the anger she was feeling toward that man.
“Eh.” Sirius sighed and shook his head a little. “Aren’t you an old granny? Don’t tell me you forgot the Euleanian customs about teachers and their disciples? Don’t tell me you think a Magistrate would teach anyone without accepting him as a disciple prior to that,” he mentioned and pretty much like he expected, managed to instantly bring a smile back to Jasmine’s face.
“That should be correct I presume?” Jasmine asked Luca and when the boy nodded, she laughed in amusement. “Good! Then, how about it. You will go to that rotten teacher of yours and you will tell him that you are resigning from the position of his disciple. This way, you will be able to both sever the connection with him to avoid the troublesome complications down the road and get back at him to an extent,” she proposed eagerly, looking more like an excited teenager as she was doing so rather than an over nine hundred years old granny that she was.
“Yeah, let’s do that,” Luca agreed eagerly. However, his older sister, Lea, immediately called the idea into question.
“Is it really a good idea? Won’t it be dangerous if Magistrate Patrick gets angry and does something reckless?”
“He won’t,” Julien said with a laugh. “He might have attempted to do something reckless if Luca pushed him to the wall with accusations, but he won’t do anything if Luca simply tells him he no longer wishes to be his disciple,” he said confidently, knowing how much that old man cared about face. He wouldn’t resort to extreme measures like killing his own disciple without a good enough reason, not when many people knew Luca would be going to disavow him.
“We can’t be sure of that,” Lea argued stubbornly. She was naturally angry about the injustice her little brother suffered, but she didn’t want to see him throwing his life away just to get back at his teacher. “What if he suspects that the cat is out of the bag decides to get rid of Luca before he can cause any problems? If Luca is dead, then it’s his words against ours; his reputation might suffer a little, but it won’t hurt him much at all,” she reasoned, very much unwilling to let Luca do something so needlessly dangerous. There needed to be better ways to sever his connection with Magistrate Patrick than this one.
Faced with Lea’s stubborn approach and reasonable arguments, Julien groaned quietly. It was hard for him to admit that a girl that could barely be called a woman was right and he was wrong, but in this situation, he was forced to admit that she had a point whether he was happy about it or not. Yet, before he had the chance to admit that he was wrong openly and embarrass himself for being too rash, someone else spoke up.
“Then how about we go with him?” Laien threw the idea up in the air and smiled cheekily. “That Magistrate might kill Luca if he is alone and you guys don’t want to go with him to avoid causing friction. So, how about Yin, Arslan and I go with him? Surely that man wouldn’t dare to harm Mustafa’s son… and it’s not like I’m without any backing that could scare him away either,” he elaborated with a wide grin on his face, then chuckled when he saw the looks on the faces of everyone change from the grim ones into very much pleasantly surprised and excited ones.
All that was left was to confirm whether Yin and Arslan were up for the idea, but in one case Laien already knew the answer and in the other, he could easily guess it.
“I’m up for that.”
“Me too.”
Yin and Arslan said one after another, both of them wearing clear smiles on their faces. Then, along with Laien, they glanced at Luca, waiting for his response.
“This time for sure, let’s do it,” Luca said excitedly, then shivered a little. With those three at his side, he would be able to disavow Magistrate Patrick without a worry!