"How so?" Red’s monotone voice almost seemed to fill with excitement for once.
"I can't tell you." Viran cut his line of questioning before it had even properly begun. "Trust me, it's not that I don't want to, but anything you learn about this could be detrimental to your current training. When you manage to finally leave this place, you'll understand what I mean."
The boy didn't know why the man wanted to keep it a secret, but he gave him the benefit of the doubt. It didn't matter either way, as long as he continued opening his spiritual veins then one day he would be strong enough to fight out of these tunnels by himself.
"Do I need to open all those acupoints before leaving?" Red questioned.
"No, if that was the case who knows how many years you would still be stuck down here. Three should be enough for what I have planned." The man shook his head. "Look, I don't mean to dishearten you kid, but when I said your talent is just average, I really meant it. If you don't get any external support, even on the surface it could take well into your twenties before you can open all your spiritual veins, not to mention down here where the spiritual energy is so sparse."
It was the first time that Red had heard such a specific number from Viran's mouth, and he truly was surprised. From when he had first learned about the spiritual veins and their acupoints, the boy knew the difficulty in opening them varied depending on the vein. Convention had it that one should start from the easiest veins to the hardest ones, and this was also what Red had been doing per Viran's instructions. Counting for all acupoints, the order from easiest to hardest was such:
Spinal Vein, with 12 acupoints normally, but with 13 under his specific technique. The boy had already completely opened this one.
Upper Arm Vein, with 10 acupoints normally, but with 12 under his technique. Red had managed to open 6 of those already and was currently in the process of opening the rest.
Upper Legs Vein, with 8 acupoints normally or 10 with his technique.
Lower Arms Vein, with 14 standard acupoints.
Lower Legs Vein, with 12 standard acupoints.
Lungs Vein, with 10 standard acupoints or 11 with his technique.
Stomach Vein, with 8 standard acupoints or 9 with his technique.
Liver Vein, with 4 standard acupoints or 5 with his technique.
Heart Vein, with 6 standard acupoints or 7 with his technique.
Five Senses Vein, with 7 standard acupoints or 8 with his technique.
Brain Vein, with 7 standard acupoints or 9 with his technique.
And finally, the last and hardest vein to open, the Third Eye vein, which had a single acupoint normally but two of them with his technique.
Those numbers added to 99 standard acupoints and 112 of them with Viran's special method. Red might appear to have been making good progress with them, opening a total of 19 already in just a few months, but the truth was that the boy could clearly feel the difficulty increasing as he progressed. Back when he was focused on the spinal vein, he could open one acupoint in a single day if he was lucky, but now in the upper arm vein, a single acupoint would take an entire week to open if he didn't have the help of his friendly blob. Red could only imagine the time necessary would increase exponentially the further he went along.
"What makes someone more talented for manipulating spiritual energy?" He asked. Even if Red knew his talent was poor, he still liked to have a frame of reference so he could dedicate himself further.
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"Simple, it's their spiritual energy sensitivity. No one really knows why, but some people can feel that energy far more easily than others. They, in turn, have a far easier time opening their veins than someone like you."
"And how long do they take?" Red followed up with another question.
"It depends. Even someone with good talent would take a lot longer if they only started opening his veins after reaching adulthood. It's why I chose you, being a kid and everything..." Viran bluntly exposed his reason for cooperation with no second thought. "However, if we're talking about those talented children that get recruited by the big organizations up top, then they can do it in a few years if they start around your age, which is generally the optimal time for opening your veins. Of course, even then some truly rare talent can do it even faster.
"For instance, some people are so sensitive and energy-compatible from birth, that their spiritual veins open up naturally as they grow up. If they put some real effort in opening them on top of that, then they could accomplish that task in a few weeks. Opening their veins would be as easy as tearing paper." To demonstrate his point, Viran picked up a piece of paper from his desk before ripping it in half.
"Is there a way to increase your talent?" Not to be dissuaded, the boy kept at it with his questions.
"What?! No!" He replied indignantly. "Why do you think it's called talent? It's something you are born with, not something you can change or acquire. Fables and legends on the surface would tell you about talentless peasants having some lucky encounter that transformed them into geniuses overnight, but those are all false and created to give people like you hope. Don't let yourself be fooled by them." The old soldier had never been one to mince his words, and he didn't hesitate to crush any such thoughts in Red's mind. "You can increase your training speed with the help of external items such as special medicines and concoctions, but talent doesn't only increase your development speed... Either way, you are getting too ahead of yourself, kid. Trust me I know how interesting it is to think about the future and the possibilities that await us, but for your own benefit, you should think about the now and not let yourself be swallowed up by your dreams."
With that said, Viran got up and started messing around with his storage boxes, taking out all sorts of things from them and putting some back in.
"If you're quite done recovering, then you should leave and go get some sleep." He spoke, without even looking at Red. "These training sessions will be a daily thing, so come find me by the tent around this time after everyone else has fallen asleep."
The boy had been so absorbed in their conversation that he forgot about the state of his own body. Moving around his limbs, Red could feel them protest in pain, but after a few seconds of catching his breath, he was able to get up.
"Then I'll be leaving." Red said, to which Viran responded with a grunt.
Most of their interactions went in such a way. In fact, they had never spoken with each other as much as they did today, but as soon as they were finished with the topic at hand they unceremoniously stopped their conversation. In a certain way, it made Red feel relieved. It clearly indicated Viran's interest in their partnership and made it seem unlikely that he had other intentions behind it. It wasn't the normal kind of relationship between a student and his teacher, but the boy much preferred it this way.
Grabbing a moonstone off the ground, Red slowly walked out of the chamber and into the tunnel beyond. His body croaked in pain, as the boy had to support himself against the wall as he went along. Suddenly, he paused. An uncomfortable realization dawned on him. He was in an unknown part of the mines, and to reach his usual hideout he would need to go through many other clearings where slaves slept, and he wouldn't be able to do anything in his condition if they tried to attack him.
Red considered returning to Viran's hideout and asking to sleep there, but he thought better of it. Exploring the tunnel, it took the boy the better part of an hour before he found a good hide place lodged in-between the cave walls to sleep at. Looking around to make sure there were no monsters or other hostile creatures lurking in the small chamber, Red sat in his hiding spot before taking the medicinal paste Viran had given him out of his pocket.
After taking off his bandages, Red smeared the brownish substance over his bruised ribs. A very uncomfortable stinging feeling spread through his chest but compared to what he had felt today it barely bothered him. Laying down on the hard rock floor, the boy scooted over to hide his body from view in a protruding rock wall. Many thoughts coursed through his mind about what he had learned today, but it didn't take long for his body to give out and for sleep to overtake his consciousness.
...
"Heed you most holy God-Emperor's decree!"
A booming voice woke Red up from his sleep. Looking around him, he found himself in a completely foreign environment, standing on top of a wall made out of the most pristine white bricks decorated with symbols and figures that the boy found incomprehensible. He was close to the edge of the rampart and from here he was able to see the ground below. Or so he thought.
A wave of nausea came over him as Red noticed that the ground seemed to be impossibly far away from him. The wall ran so far down that it eventually receded into an inscrutable and blurry mess. Looking over to the side, he also noticed the noble structure extended far beyond his view in a straight line, seemingly cutting the whole world in half. The sky above flowed in golden light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. The ground on the other side of the wall however was a desolate waste of pale sand as far as the eye could see. Red didn't know why, but he felt the smell of death rising to reach him from kilometers deep into that soil.
His mind couldn't take it, and the boy felt as if he was about to collapse as he closed his eyes. Suddenly, the same booming deafening voice echoed again, the sounds seemingly reaching deep into his consciousness.
"The White Temple is commanded thus to surrender its False Idols to our God-Emperor. Your Holy Priest and his Ministers are commanded to surrender themselves to our God-Emperor and bear his judgment. The territories under your protection are also commanded to submit themselves to occupation by our God-Emperor’s holy armies. Every cultivator inside your territory must..."
The voice spoke in a foreign language, but Red seemed to comprehend it at first. However, his consciousness threatened to break apart and the words soon became incomprehensible. At long last, the boy dared to open his eyes once more and look towards the source of the voice.
A light as blinding as the sun was all he could identify at first, bearing down on him with all its glory and holiness. His eyes slowly adapted themselves. In the middle of it, a shape started to appear. A disembodied eye. Then another. Then one more. Soon enough there were thousands of them that Red could see of varying sizes, and their numbers were only increasing.
Suddenly, all of them turned to stare at him. He felt terror. And then he felt nothing.
Only darkness.