Leo’s back was drenched in cold sweat. Once again he found himself in the familiar room of the Spirit tower, but this time besides the gorgeous woman, dressed in blood red robe, there were three more. He hadn’t been under so much stress since the time he joined Lana’s group and the fact that all four were country toppling beauties, although two were a bit older and one of them had dark green hair, screamed all possible signs of warning inside of him.
Rules number five, six and seven – they all applied to the current circumstances and the youth felt paralyzed by the restrictions. It was one thing to be vigilant around them and let them speak while listening, but a whole other was not pissing off any of them. Clearly they all were stronger than him, especially the two Nascent soul stage sect masters, but he really didn’t want to experience another ‘Dreadlands’ nor he wanted to cultivate in the Spirit tower.
The four women, seeing his distorted expression were rather satisfied, each for their own reasons, of course. For the two youngest, Etessa and Elsa, it was the common sense any guy would loose his mind if he was placed against the current lineup, but their attractiveness was the last thing on Leo’s mind. He even forgot to compare them to Anna, even though it was the usual standard procedure any woman in his life had to go through.
The two oldest, the sect masters, snickered to themselves in satisfaction, seeing the youth was afraid and timid enough. It only meant they, especially lady Evelyn, had enough power to manipulate all his decisions. Unfortunately all Leo felt was panic and panic driven fear. He knew nothing good could come out of the current meeting and prayed he would either get executed right away or dispelled from the sect – in that case he could at least go rogue and join grandpa Noel, becoming one of the infamous cultivators of the corrupted path.
“… as you can see, once again you’ve made a great contribution to the sect and to the righteous path as a whole, thus I’m going to honor my promise and let you cultivate in the Spirit tower for three months straight.” Lady Evelyn finished her lengthy monologue, meant for brainwashing subordinates.
Unfortunately, right before she intended to explain why the cultivation had to be postponed, Leo gathered his courage and asked, “Thank you, sect master, but may I receive another reward?”
His question stupefied all three and Etessa was confused the most. She had spent in the Spirit tower almost every waking moment since the war with the intention to form the Nascent soul as soon as possible and knew how valuable the time spent here was for any cultivator.
“Why?” She blurted out, “Do you realize no one has ever had such honor up until now?”
“I’m sorry if it is too brazen!” Leo did his best to seem modest and simple minded, “But I feel that currently what I lack is not the Qi cultivation, but rather techniques.”
Several times a day he kept releasing Qi through the extremities and if anything, he had too much of it. Of course, not from a cultivator’s standpoint, but from someone’s who tried to keep his sorry life.
“Didn’t you just spend two years in a realm without Qi? Aren’t you afraid to fall behind your peers?” Elsa was also baffled by the guy.
“I did, but I’m afraid suddenly absorbing too much of it might cause more harm than do good.” Leo gave the argument he had prepared months ago, “That is why I currently want to focus on movement techniques.”
“Movement? Weren’t you interested in close combat the last time we met?” Lady Evelyn asked, furrowing her brows. This guy kind of didn’t make sense. In fact, by looking at him it was hard to believe he was the one who actually managed to return after successfully completing the task.
“Yes.” Leo nodded giving an annoyingly short answer, but immediately felt he broke the rule number five and all four women in front of him had an urge to hurt him.
“Alright. I’ll grant you your wish. I hope your sect master wouldn’t mind.” Laura Cloud said, surprising the rest. Leo did actually save her life and she didn’t want to owe him no matter what schemes were in lady Evelyn’s mind, “My daughter will teach you our signature movement technique, the ‘Angelic wind’. It is heaven ranked, in fact it’s high heaven ranked technique and only because it’s useless for the Nascent soul stage and above. Unfortunately it is meant for someone with wind affinity and from what I understand you have fire, just like your sect master. Elsa will teach you for one day and how much you’ll learn is up to you. One more thing though, you are not allowed to share anything you learn with anyone, otherwise, well, you understand ...”
Everyone looked at her in surprise although all besides Leo understood why she would share the most treasured technique of the Angelic Down. Leo, on the other hand, tried to calculate to himself if lightning was as fast as the wind and if he could benefit enough from the reward.
“Sect master Cloud has granted you an incredible gift! Why aren’t you thanking her?” Lady Evelyn’s loud bark returned Leo back to the reality and he immediately thanked by bowing towards the lady with the green hair multiple times.
Seeing the etiquette was finally followed, lady Evelyn continued, “Just like the last time, the reward you received had vastly exceeded your contribution, but that is alright, we take care of our disciples. But there is another thing we needed to talk about.”
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‘Here it is!’ Leo held his breath, ‘For Heaven’s sake, please don’t be another Dreadlands!’
“The experience you’ve gathered during the two last expeditions is invaluable and even though you’re still at the Qi gathering stage, there is no one from the younger generation who can compare to you. That is why I want to appoint you as the head of the next expedition group. Contrary to the last time, in order to increase the chances of survival of our disciples, we won’t separate you in four smaller groups. After discussing with the division elders we unanimously agreed you’ll be the one to lead everyone.” Lady Evelyn explained in a grave tone, but Leo already knew she was nicely saying he was going to be thrown in a hot pot.
‘Rule number eight!’ He suddenly remembered.
Right, the latest rule he added to the list! If you don’t want to take part in anything, appear unreliable!
“Sect master, I’m not sure about it.” Trying to look as miserable as possible, Leo said, “Not only my cultivation is weak, just like lady Elsa said, I lived in a realm without Qi for two years. Compared to my elder brothers and sisters, I’m seriously lacking.”
“Don’t worry!” Lady Evelyn interrupted him, easily guessing where he was going. After all she had seen too many cheeky youths in her life, “You’ll still have half a month to prepare. For this expedition both sects will join their forces and you’ll be the one to lead them, it’s decided!”
“Mom, why did you have to promise him the ‘Angelic wind’?” The moment Leo stopped out the door, Elsa pouted.
Laura Cloud, of course, knew she was upset more about the fact she had to personally teach the youth rather than sharing the sect’s heritage.
She smiled, pinched the daughter’s cheek and said, “Don’t worry, teaching a guy for a change won’t be too bad. In addition, I just couldn’t let him walk away empty handed … he didn’t save only my life, he saved the Angelic Dawn! If I hadn’t showed up, I’m pretty sure you would’ve found the Seven peaks disciples at our doorstep in a year or two. Evelyn has enough of her own problems – she can’t protect us forever.”
“You’re thinking too much of it, Elsa.” Lady Evelyn was in a good mood as well, “The boy is only at the Qi gathering stage, but the ‘Angelic wind’ requires the elemental manipulation. The reward your mother granted is a once in a lifetime opportunity to spend a day with an otherworldly beauty, not to learn anything.”
The two sect masters laughed, but Elsa couldn’t shake off the strange feeling she got earlier. There was definitely something off about the guy, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Fortunately spending the rest of the day with her friend Etessa made her forget the previous incident. The two hadn’t met for a long time and had a lot of catch up to do.
Leo didn’t forget the discussion though.
‘Those four damned witches!’ He cursed to himself, ‘They are set on sending me to death this time, I’m pretty sure about it!’
Just as he solved one impeding danger, a bunch of women decided his life was too easy.
Since Jack was still busy with his daily alchemy practices, Leo went to the spot he hadn't been to in years. He climbed the pine tree at the far end of the sect and from high up overlooked the activities of the other disciples. Somehow it allowed his mind to calm down and his tense nerves to relax.
‘Damn … women sure are dangerous beings …’ He though to himself.
Suddenly he got an idea – to revise the good old rule list. He had started it over ten years ago and it definitely needed some tweaks.
‘Alright!’ He though, ‘Let’s see … the first rule …’
The first rule about the auspicious days was a nostalgic heritage from his father, but it did prove important when he met the Brandon guy in the Oceandesert realm. But there were more important rules.
After careful consideration he decided – from now on the first rule will be – ‘women are dangerous!’. It was much more important to never forget it than the second ‘always carry something to drink!’. In addition, because of his new accessory, he currently had an empty storage room at his disposal at all times. The third rule about not taking too much of other people’s stuff still made sense as did the previous number eight – about appearing unreliable.
In the end he was left with five cardinal rules and to his surprise the new number one, ‘women are dangerous!’, comprised four rules he had previously. And it was clear it all pointed to a fact how important the new rule number one was.
Armed with the revelation, he rushed to meet Jack.
During the past two months they did hang out frequently, almost every evening. Unfortunately ‘almost’, because the older friend sometimes was busy with his lady friend Lucia. Jack’s own rule, ‘bros before hoes’, appeared to be not as strict as any from Leo’s list, but it didn’t matter – they both could skip a day even though they had a lot to talk about.
This time, even though Leo he had the news of the day, Jack pulled him away and when there was no one around, whispered, “Listen, something big is about to go down. Maybe even another war!”
“What?” Leo was confused.
“For the past two months I’ve been tasked to continuously craft antidotes and purifying elixirs and, since I’m practicing to move to … well … you know which city, I didn’t bother asking about it. But today I learned the whole alchemy division has been doing the same thing! We have made more antidotes than the time we went against the Voodoo sect! … or so I’ve been told.” Jack hurriedly explained.
“F*ck!” Leo cursed. He immediately guessed this had something to do with him being appointed as a leader of the new expedition group. As it appeared, the higher-ups had planned this already for some time!
“It’s not war.” He said with a sigh, “They intend to send me away again … with a bunch of others. We’ll probably have a briefing soon, she said I had ten days time to prepare.”
“Damn, man! You can’t go! Who’ll bring me to Gol… who’ll bring me away?” Jack became frustrated, “And it was already too dangerous the last time! And why you? Didn’t you earn enough merit points?”
“The sect master insisted I go.” Leo helplessly spread his hands, “Besides, I can’t escape this place so easily – she’s at the Nascent soul stage, you know.”
“Hmm … what if … what if you had a bit more time?” Jack immediately thought of something, “What if we burned the warehouse down and there were no more antidotes? We would need another two months to craft that amount …”
“Wait, how much stuff is there?” Leo suddenly had an idea.