Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 92. Mutually Beneficial.

When they heard what Patrick wanted from them, Laien and Yin couldn’t help but turn slightly angry. The fact that Yin was a magical beast needed to be kept secret, else the two of them would encounter a myriad of trouble in the future, not to mention what the reaction of the Forbidden Lands would be in case one of their tightly-guarded secrets leaked out. Giving Patrick a hint or two about Blood Pact would still have been fine as the man appeared to have done research on his own and likely had learned a few unconfirmed rumors… but telling him everything was out of the question, not to mention that he was also demanding an unconditional favor! Neither of those two conditions was acceptable in any way to the two of them.

“No way,” Laien said without bothering to hide his anger. This time around, the conditions laid out by Patrick were too unrealistic for them to agree. “We won’t tell you what you want to know and we won’t owe you some favors based on ridiculous conditions,” he stated uncompromisingly.

“Yeah, we can’t agree to something like that,” Yin supported sternly. If Patrick’s demands were more reasonable, he wouldn’t have hesitated to agree to them. After all, he was pretty sure that Patrick didn’t realize the true worth of the tomes he was giving away. However, even considering how useful those five tomes would be to them, there were always things that were more important than the others.

Patrick groaned a little after receiving such a negative response from the boys, but he didn’t show much of that disappointment on his face. Considering how easily those two had confirmed that there indeed was a Blood Pact between them, he thought he might have a chance to learn something more about this subject… alas, judging from their reaction just now, they were extremely adverse to this demand of his. As for the favor part? He wasn’t necessarily all that interested in this one; he only added it for the sake of dropping it along the negotiations.

“Well, shall be it,” Patrick said with a sigh. “I don’t need anything else from you, so feel free to spend a few more hours before you pick the four tomes you want.”

“Wait a second,” Laien spoke up, a little unwilling to allow the trade to end like that. “Before you say you aren’t interested in anything we can offer you, why don’t you listen to us first?” he requested carefully, making sure the tone of his voice wouldn’t sound neither too insistent nor too apprehensive.

“Hm,” Patrick nodded slightly. “Go ahead then,” he said with a calm smile. He had nothing to lose if he listened to what those two had to say, so he didn’t mind letting them try and persuade him.

Yin glanced at Laien in an intrigued manner. He could tell that Laien had an idea of sorts, but he couldn’t figure out what did he want to offer to Patrick. The two of them were originally quite rich and over their journey, especially after they shared the spoils coming from Yimar Furi and two of his commanders, they came to possess the mindboggling amount of money and treasures. However, would any of those things truly entice Patrick? Yin himself wouldn’t mind giving away the majority of their belongings for the opportunity of obtaining the fifth tome… but he didn’t think it would be enough to make Patrick change his mind.

To someone like Patrick, who valued a few sentences more than thousands of Euleanian platinum coins, normal treasures simply wouldn’t be all that precious.

“I offer you a gamble,” Laien said with a wry smile, immediately causing both a frown and an intrigued look to appear on Patrick’s face. “We will definitely take Martial and Spiritual Transcendence tome and the two advanced Ancient Magic tomes. The only question that remains is which of the two elementary Ancient Magic tomes we give up. Those elementary tomes should be of roughly equal value, so let us speak with one of them in mind,” he elaborated beforehand and seeing Patrick nod in agreement, he continued straight to the point.

“You must be able to tell that as long as we don’t die along the way, both Yin and I will grow to be powerful experts. We might not be able to give you anything of adequate value now… but there is a high chance that we will be able to do so in the future and by then, we will surely return the favor twice over,” he offered, thinking that an offer like that was fairly reasonable. It wasn’t like Patrick hadn’t studied those elementary Ancient Magic tomes before, so he wasn’t giving away something he hadn’t thoroughly learned before, or at least attempted to learn.

“Amusing idea,” Patrick said with a quiet laugh. “But that’s all it is. An amusing idea. What could you possibly give me in twenty or thirty years that I couldn’t obtain myself? I’ve been biding my time and suppressing my cultivation while I was trying to fully comprehend the Six Refinements to Immortality, but now that I’ve comprehended the sixth level, I will be able to completely master it within a decade. Soon, I will reach the apex of power… and then beyond it,” he said with a calm, confident smile and shook his head a little. It was true that those two boys had a heaven-defying level of talent, but he himself was no worse than either of them and he had much more experience.

“Right, since we are on this subject,” he mentioned, the tone of his voice becoming a bit more energetic. “I hope you realize how precious those tomes are. I’m fairly confident in my ability to protect myself, but if you two casually show or speak about them to people… then may the gods bless you when some of the greedy old folks start eyeing you,” he advised honestly. He had already been made into a fool by those two boys… he didn’t want to see them die a pointless death. That would be too meaningless of an ending.

“You don’t even realize how precious they are…” Laien grumbled silently. He wasn’t used to being dismissed so unhesitatingly, so he was feeling rather sour at the moment.

“You really don’t want a favor from us?” Yin brought up and smiled at Patrick. “Laien told you we can offer you a gamble… so how about that? In the future, when we grow powerful enough, we will help you establish relations with the Forbidden Lands. You must realize that this isn’t something you can do just because you personally are strong,” he said with a slight, wry smile.

Unlike before, Patrick’s expression turned serious and he didn’t respond immediately. In his nearly two centuries of life, the Forbidden Lands remained the only enigma to him, the only place that mystified him… and the only place he didn’t dare to trespass. The various knowledge had always been of great enticement to him and on this continent, it was the Forbidden Lands which held most of what could still arouse his desire. It was true that those tomes were precious to him… but he was already giving up four of them. It was like Laien mentioned, the fifth one wouldn’t change much… and considering what Yin was offering him in exchange… he couldn’t help but give in.

“Fine, take all five of them, you damned Devils,” Patrick said with a helpless laugh. If this little gamble failed, all he would lose was one of his ancient tomes… but if it paid off, he would gain many times over that tome’s value. Even if the odds were low, the ratio of cost to benefit was good enough for him to take the risk.

The look in Yin’s eyes lit up the moment Patrick agreed. He smiled brightly and looked at Laien, who most definitely was just as happy as he was; and at the same time, thankful and impressed. Laien himself didn’t think that just by making the offer more specific in a certain direction they would be able to achieve results that were so good. He was really glad that Yin thought of taking this approach.

“Are you sure you want to take those five?” Patrick inquired amiably. “If so, then I’ll be putting the rest of them away,” he mentioned and extended his hand, then gave Laien and Yin an inquiring look. If they were sure, then he would put the remaining four books back into his interspatial ring.

Laien and Yin exchanged a glance, then confirmed with a simple nod. They each took their respective elemental tomes into their own interspatial rings, then both took a look at the Martial and Spiritual Transcendence tome. A second later, Yin chuckled a little and pushed it toward Laien; he didn’t really mind which one of them had this tome and he knew Laien liked the comfort of having everything he needs at hand, so he didn’t think long about doing as he thought would be for the best.

Laien revealed an embarrassed smile and placed the tome into his interspatial ring. Yin really knew him and his tendencies all too well.

“That should be everything, huh?” Patrick asked a few seconds later. “Unless you are planning to stay for dinner, I suggest you get going,” he said with a slight, meaningful smile. They had established a relationship and struck the deal; as he saw it, there was no reason to waste time on pointless chatter and empty pleasantries as they wouldn’t bring anything positive to either of their parties.

Despite being a bit startled by Patrick shutting their meeting down in this way, Laien and Yin didn’t oppose the idea. They too felt it would be nothing more than empty get-go if they requested to stay longer and tried talking with Patrick under the pretense of getting to know him. They might not have known Patrick for long, but they came to understand his character well enough not to attempt such a counterproductive way to court some goodwill with him.

“Thanks for everything,” Laien said after standing up. He didn’t expect a random encounter with Luca’s teacher to end up like that, but he would lie if he said he wasn’t happy about it.

“Stop bullshitting me.” Patrick rolled his eyes. “If you want to do something for me, then live long enough to make full of your promise,” he said and smirked at Laien. “What are you two smiling at me for? I already have one pest that wants me to babysit it, I don’t need more of them,” he said with a laugh and gestured the two of them toward the door.

Laien and Yin chuckled. The bowed slightly toward Patrick, then headed off like he told them to. As they stood by the door, they spared one last glance at him and at his chamber, nodded at him one more time and finally, opened the door and left.

“What a handful,” Patrick murmured. “I’ve really grown too soft. Agreeing so easily to bet on their future when that old demon is in the middle of playing with them, did I go crazy?” he asked himself and laughed helplessly. “I guess I can consider it as sowing good seeds. With some luck… hrm. With a lot of luck, it will bring me a good harvest in the future,” he mused for a bit, then glanced at the table with the intent of storing it away and noticed something.

“This kid, when did he take away the bottle?” he asked aloud and for the first time in forever, burst out in an honest, unrestrained laughter. He had been planning to go back to his training, but instead, he walked to the door and opened it. “Here, take that with you since you like it so much,” he said with a laugh and threw a high-grade interspatial ring to Laien with a flick of his hand.

“Uh,” Surprised, Laien wanted to say something, but Patrick simply laughed and closed the door before he could respond in any way.

“What did he give you?” Arslan asked curiously. He had a feeling that Laien and Yin were quite happy with themselves now that they left Patrick’s chamber; he very much wanted to find some time to spend with them alone so he could ask what was it all about. He just wanted to know a little too! He wouldn’t tell his friends to share their secrets with him… but he would listen if they did so on their own.

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Prompted by Arslan, Laien checked the contents of the interspatial ring. Since there was no spiritual imprint on it, it took him no time at all to find out what was inside, what in consequence caused a strange and yet pleased smile to emerge on his face. “A lot of strong grape wine,” he said with a chuckle. Was it because Patrick noticed that he snatched that one bottle away? If so, then he was grateful for the nice gift.

“… What did you do to him?” Luca asked in turn. “Teacher never treats anyone so favorably. It’s only been like twenty or thirty minutes! What happened in there?” he questioned in disbelief. Was it because Laien was so talented? Was it? Or did it simply mean that his character was to Patrick’s liking? Just thinking about it was making him mad; he didn’t want to admit it before himself, but Laien was making him feel extremely jealous!

“Sorry, it’s a secret,” Laien replied with a laugh and chuckled at Luca’s ‘eeeeh?!’ expression. Did getting a bucket of cold water poured on his head cause Luca’s character to change a little, or was Luca always like that but had simply been suppressing those tendencies within himself?

“Aren’t you worried Patrick will hear you?” Arslan asked with an amused smile on his face. Luca had been downtrodden this whole time they had been sitting here and waiting, so he was happy to see that Luca was feeling better already.

“He won’t,” said with a troubled smile, only now realizing that he had allowed his emotions to get better of him and started behaving in an embarrassing way. He collected himself as well as he could and explained briefly. “The door and walls are completely soundproof. Who knows how exactly teacher knows when someone is waiting in this room and when it’s empty.”

“It’s probably formations,” Laien said calmly, the look in his eyes turning a bit more serious as he swept the room with his aura. He hadn’t noticed anything strange originally, but now that he had gained a rudimentary level of expertise thanks to the Intent of the Art of Formations tome, he saw a few small signs that this whole tower was covered in a grand rune-like formation that only waited to be activated with a thought of its controller. He couldn’t be sure, but he had a feeling that even an elite martial master of the fifth rank, or to make the comparison more relatable, even someone as strong as Reian wouldn’t be able to breach this tower’s defenses on his own.

“And that’s just if the formation is passively activated… if Patrick actually took the effort to control it, I fear that only someone at Mustafa’s or Rudford’s level would be able to breach it with force,” Laien mused silently. With the exception of Altair, whose strength was unfathomable to him, Patrick was likely the strongest person he had personally met so far. “He said something about a Heavenly Flame too… I don’t think it’s quite at the ‘Heavenly’ level that those two siblings spoke about, but it should be fairly high at the levels of Spiritual Domains. That flame probably enhanced Patrick’s original domain in some way and allowed him to step into something like a half-step Heavenly Domain,” he speculated as he was slowly getting used to the random bits and pieces of knowledge he had obtained from comprehending those nine Intents.

“Do we go or is there something else?” Arslan asked after a moment, seeing how Laien was lost in his thoughts and didn’t seem to realize everyone’s attention was on him.

“What?” Laien’s eyes opened wide as he turned to look at Arslan. “Ah, right. We can go, there’s nothing else to do here,” he said with a half-apologetic smile. He didn’t think he would end up dazed by the new memories in the middle of a conversation. Those things were just too interesting; he couldn’t wait to find a few weeks of free time so he could study all those five tomes they had gotten from Patrick. After all, just obtaining a good part of the Intents wasn’t enough; actually reading through those tomes step by step would bring both him and Yin a lot of additional benefits.

“Ugh, I kinda don’t want to leave,” Luca admitted with a weak groan and scratched the back of his head, feeling rather awkward. How was he supposed to explain that whole situation with Patrick to his sister, to their friends… and to Jasmine, Julien and to the rest of the adults. He was about to die of shame just by thinking about explaining what the issue had been to them after they all got so angry for his sake. If he could, he would dig a hole for himself to crawl into and hide in it until all the questions went away… but life wasn’t so soft and easy.

“Just tell them the truth,” Yin advised straightforwardly. “What else can you do? Lying to them will only make everything that much worse when the truth comes out later. Man up and do it quickly so it won’t hurt as much,” he said with a playful chuckle and sent Luca a wry smile. Some fault was on Patrick’s shoulders, but most of it was Luca’s own fault. As such, there was no way around it. He needed to take responsibility for his screw-up and try to never repeat it again.

“Ugh…” Luca groaned for the second time, this time much more heavily. He understood that Yin was right, but that bright smile of his was making him feel worse instead of better. He wanted to be consoled, not cheered on to go and face the consequences…! Aaah!

“Either you tell them or we will,” Laien said with a grin, then laughed when Luca’s face turned a little pale and his expression became tense and nervous. “I’m just kidding… but really, if you don’t tell them, the news will get out sooner or later,” he mentioned consolingly and patted Luca on the back.

“Let’s go,” he encouraged cheerfully and headed first to the exit, then to the place where everyone was waiting for them.

Yin and Arslan followed after Laien without delay, while Luca fought with himself for a few seconds before chasing after him and the other two. He really didn’t want to face everyone right now as he kept telling himself that he wasn’t mentally prepared… but those three left him with no other choice.

“Maybe it really will hurt less if I do it quickly,” Luca murmured, hoping that Yin was right about this one thing and everybody wouldn’t be too angry with him.

A minute or so later, the four of them met up with Lea, Julien, Jasmine and the rest of the people who were biding their time and waiting for them to return.

“You are back! Took you a while,” Lea called out immediately and ran up to approach the boys. The spot between the buildings and the walls they were at was devoid of people, so she didn’t care about being too loud and didn’t mind behaving in a slightly inappropriate manner. She felt the urge to hug her little brother when she stopped in front of him, but her better senses prevented her from embarrassing him in this way in front of all those officers and hopefully, his new friends. “How did it go? Was Patrick angry? Did he let you go without putting forth any crazy conditions?” she asked impatiently, putting both of her hands on Luca’s shoulders. She saw that Luca was rather pale and looked worried, so she couldn’t help but worry if something hadn’t gone wrong.

“No, everything worked out…” Luca mumbled out, his was starting to grow flushed; he wanted to look his sister in the eye, but he no matter how hard he tried, his head refused to lift itself. Yeah… admitting that he had screwed up huge time was one thing, but telling those people that they were angry for nothing and that they should no longer bear ill will toward Patrick was the hardest part.

“Really?” Lea gripped Luca’s shoulder a bit more tightly. She looked away from her little brother and glanced at the other three boys, but she failed to recognize much from the slightly troubled smiles those three had on their faces. Yet, she wasn’t oblivious enough to accept what Luca said without asking any further questions; she just felt something was wrong and she wanted to know what it was.

“Speak,” Julien encouraged in a strong, serious voice. “If there’s any trouble we didn’t account for previously, we will deal with it. Patrick’s authority may be high, but in the end, I’m the Lord of this city,” he reassured with a smile that was both amicable and a little dangerous. It wasn’t hard to notice that his opinion of Patrick no longer was the same as it used to be.

“That’s right,” Jasmine spoke up too. “If it comes to the worst, we can stand behind your back too. A Magistrate represents a great deal of influence, but with the state the Eulene is in, he will think twice before creating bad blood between himself and White Guard,” she said with a flat-out scary smile. Unlike Julien, whose head had cooled down considerably, she was still furious at Patrick for intentionally failing to guide his disciple on the path of cultivation… or even for potentially scheming against the boy for some inexplicable reason.

“Just tell us what happened.”

“We can deal with whatever Patrick wants from you, don’t worry.”

“Come on, stop looking so depressed and start speaking.”

As more and more people began encouraging Luca, he himself could only groan silently. Each sentence was making him feel more guilty about everything he had ended up causing; how in the world was he supposed to tell them it was all a huge misunderstanding when they were all being so nice and understanding with him? He feared to think what would happen when he told them the truth; if only there was a way to make it as nothing had ever happened…!

At the same time, the looks on Laien, Yin and Arslan’s faces were becoming more and more awkward. Poor Luca… they sympathized with him, but the more he delayed, the harder it would be for him to explain. However, the kinda of promised not to do it for him, so they waited patiently, at least for the time being.

“Big sis,” Luca grit his teeth and finally forced himself to raise his head and look up. He swallowed heavily; the silence which fell the moment he spoke up wasn’t helping him to force the following words out of his throat and mouth in the slightest. “I’m sorry, everyone. It actually wasn’t just teacher’s fault… rather, it was mainly my own fault… I’m still teacher’s disciple, so nothing much happened, just some explaining…” he tried to say in as coherent manner as he could. Alas, he was quite obviously too nervous to string a sensible sentence together properly.

Thus, it wasn’t a surprise that most of those who were listening didn’t quite get what Luca was saying. They had an idea of what he meant… but they couldn’t bring themselves to believe that their interpretation of Luca’s words was correct. That would be too… it just would be too weird.

“Luca.” Julien ended up being the one to respond the quickest. “Explain it to us one more time, this time slowly and in detail so there are no misunderstandings. I hope you realize how important it is to get everything straight in this situation,” he reminded somewhat sternly. He might have never liked Patrick, but the man was a Magistrate. If they had somehow made an enemy out of him because of some ridiculous failure in communication on Luca’s part which resulted in this whole affair, then… he didn’t even want to think about it. The only saving grace was the fact they didn’t spread the news of this matter before coming here to confront Patrick about it.

Faced with Julien’s angry tone, Luca involuntarily shrank into himself. He had been too prideful and too blind, so he caused everyone trouble. He wanted to do as he was told and to explain everything, but his throat was clenching so hard that he was incapable of uttering a word.

“Luca, would you mind if we explained the details for you?” Laien offered, feeling bad to watch Luca in this pitiful state. Luca was feeling guilty for what he had done; perhaps even more guilty than he himself would have felt in Luca’s place. Since Luca understood that he had done something stupid well enough to regret it, he saw no reason to have him suffer through this unpleasant situation longer than necessary and so, he offered him a hand.

Luca breathed with relief when he heard Laien’s offer. He quickly shook his head, confirming that he didn’t mind. He really was grateful to Laien for saving him from this predicament.

“Well,” Laien raised his voice a little, making sure that everyone could hear him clearly. “In brief words, the story goes as such. Luca was always self-taught and he happened to never learn what compression training was. He had a high level of insights, so no one noticed that his spiritual energy was weaker than it should have been. Then, he became Patrick’s disciple and even those who thought there might be something wrong with his training dared not to mention it. As for Patrick himself, he had told Luca he didn’t quite want a disciple and would only teach him the specific things Luca asked him about. For that reason, he never told Luca about the compression training,” he explained straightforwardly, without mentioning the useless little parts and the excuses made by both sides.

After Laien finished speaking, the two dozen people present fell silent. They all didn’t know what to think about this whole affair… Laien’s explanation was just too strange. Did series of unlucky coincidences and foolish decisions actually happen like that in real life? They could hardly believe it, but the more they thought about it the more sense Laien’s words made to them. Yes, at the very least, this explanation was more sensible than a Magistrate actively scheming against his disciple.

“Luca…” Lea moaned painfully, unsure what to think and feel. Wasn’t she also part of the problem? It was true that Luca should have noticed something sooner.. and it was true that Patrick should have at least mentioned the compression training to him… but she could have also done something to prevent this outcome! If she talked with some spiritual masters or if she tried reading some books about magic, then maybe this whole thing could have been avoided.

“You must be shitting me,” Julien said resignedly and looked up at the sky, caring little about the kind of words he was using in front of his subordinates. This situation was such a complete mess!