“Wake up, Krun!” Opal gave Krun’s head a slap after untying the rope. When Krun got up, Opal grinned at him while shaking the rope. “Hmm… How do you like this?”

“Hmm…” Krun rubbed his eyes, pretending to be tired. “Not thick enough. I can still feel my wrist after being tied for an entire god damn night.”

“I’ll be sure to tie it tighter.”

“Sorry. I’m just joking Ms Opal.”

Opal sneered. “Get ready to go out.”

Accompanied by Opal, Krun went to the bathroom to get ready, with Opal outside the stall of course. Krun was also told to carry a large wooden bucket of clean water back to their room. Strangely, the bucket of water didn’t feel as heavy as Krun thought it would be. His leg pain had also subsided by quite a bit.

“Is it because of the Qi I practiced?” He thought as he felt his limbs.

Still, travelling with two women was more difficult than Krun initially thought. He was “kicked out” of the room for the entire morning waiting for the two women to get ready. It was a funny picture having Krun tied outside of his kidnappers’ room.

As for himself, after going to the bathroom, lightly washing his face, dabbing his body with a damped towel, and rinsing his mouth, he was ready for the day. The entire process took no more than thirty minutes.

“So why are they taking so long…” Krun complained as he ate some of the hard bread Opal bought yesterday.

It was approaching two hours since they woke up. Granted, Mew slept in for quite a while, but they should have been done by now!

Finally, the door opened and out walked two young women. Krun now understood why they took so much time to get ready. Or rather, why Mew took so much time to get ready.

Mew’s hair was meticulously done, with her signature golden yellow hairstick placed on top of it, and the thin layer of makeup on her face gave an air of extravagance. No wonder she took so much time to get ready. The sleeping Mew and the Mew now were almost two different people. Both beautiful in their own rights, but with different style.

“Because of your obsession with being pretty I waited here for two hours!? Where has reason gone in this world?” Krun thought as he shook his head.

“What the hell is this little brat thinking about?” Opal clicked her tongue and ruffled Krun’s hair aggressively. She untied Krun roughly and threw her baggage to him. “Move!”

“I’ll be counting on you too, Krun,” Mew spoke softly to Krun as she handed her baggage him.

The two white-robed figures started walking, unaware of the pair of hateful eyes staring at them.

“One day I’ll have my revenge…”

“Brat! Keep up!”

“Yes, madam!”

*

The morning was tough as usual. Unlike yesterday, Krun did find himself barely keeping up with the two leading girls, but he never managed to talk to the girls since he was still too exhausted to do so.

“If things proceeded like this, I won’t get their sympathy!” Krun thought, panting.

The trio reached another town by early afternoon and went to a restaurant. After sitting down at an empty table, Opal ordered some noodles, vegetable, and fruit for the three of them.

“All vegetarian…?” Krun squinted his eyes in disbelief.

“Dissatisfied?” Opal sneered. “Don’t eat it then.”

Krun sighed and started eating. Though lacking meat, the food wasn’t bad. “Is all food in Fairen that good?” Krun thought. “The city of trade certainly is different from Kemm.”

Mew looked at Krun, thought for a second and asked the waiter for a piece of cooked chicken breast.

“Mew! How could you?” Opal glared at her. “Do you not remember the White Mist faction rules? I can’t believe you’d break them here!”

“I don’t plan on breaking the rules any time soon.” Mew politely responded. “I’m just ordering some meat for Krun. He’s at that age where he should be eating a lot. If he doesn’t eat enough, how can he carry our baggage?”

Opal thought for a while and nodded. Mew delightedly handed the bowl of chicken to Krun.

“Eat up!” Mew said, smiling brightly.

“O-oh, thanks.”

The aroma of chicken combined with the garlicy spring onion sauce brought a smile to Krun’s face. He helped himself with it and took a small bite.

“It’s so good! It’s just chicken breast but it’s so good!” Krun said as he wolfed down the rest of the chicken.

Suddenly, he remembered something and stopped midway eating a piece of chicken.

“Big sis-, I mean, Ms Mew, do you want some too?” Krun asked.

Mew widened her eyes momentarily, but her usual expression returned after. No one saw the expression Mew made just then. She simply smiled and answered, “No. Students in the White Mist faction follow a vegetarian diet. You should eat them.”

“Thanks, Ms Mew!”

“Be careful not to choke.”

Opal fell in deep thought. “Throughout our entire journey, she rarely smiled that much. Even at the White Haze Palace, she barely talked to anyone besides the faction head and me. If I had known that taking Krun with us would be like this, I would’ve killed him at the temple…”

She looked at the smiling Mew and a complicated feeling arose in her heart. Opal had been looking after Mew for years, and although Opal was cruel and ruthless, she still held some feelings for her. Opal sighed.

“Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe Mew can take her mind off her arduous Qi training and rest more. That way she can progress, perhaps even break through and reach the third level.” She could only hope this was the case. “Telhim… Tell me… What should I do…?”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Oblivious to what Opal was thinking, Krun glanced at her. He saw a young woman with an almost melancholic tension between her eyebrows. Something was weighing down on her, but of course, Krun knew not ask about it. He wanted to stay alive after all. There was no telling what this monster was capable of if he were to step over the boundary, so he made the self-proclaimed correct choice of ignoring her.

“Let’s see if I can get information from the dumb one instead…” Krun thought.

“Say, Ms Mew, why do you buy so many cosmetics?”

“Hmm… Now that you say it, I’m not sure… I guess I just want to stay pretty?”

“But you bought so many! … Oh, I know! You’re not allowed to buy them because of your strict faction head, so now that you’re free, you can buy as many as you want!”

“Not necessarily… Every week we, the disciples, write down a list of things we want and the head buys them for us. I put down a long list of cosmetics every week and they are always delivered, not one missing.”

“Why does the head buy things for you? Do they not give you allowance?”

“Oh, silly you…” Mew smiled. “We’re not allowed to leave the White Haze Palace, so the head buys what we want for us.”

Krun was stunned. He tried to process what Mew said. The disciples were basically imprisoned in a palace with a shady faction head, and Mew didn’t even think it was weird! For a second, Krun doubted his sanity. Was he the one without common sense?

“W-why are you not allowed to leave?”

“It’s so that we can focus on our training…”

“Sounds tough… I know I won’t be able to persist through harsh trainings…” said Krun, the person who self-taught himself the first level of Scathing Haze Qi. “What kind of training?”

“Nowadays, I’m training hard to reach the third level of Sca…” Mew covered her mouth with her two palms frantically. “I almost forgot Opal’s remarks! I-I can’t tell you that, Krun.”

“Don’t worry, I know you’ve got things you don’t want to talk about…” Krun smiled bitterly.

“I’m sorry, Krun…”

“It’s fine.”

Mew felt guilty seeing Krun’s lonely smile. She stole a glance at Opal, who was still lost in contemplation. She wiggled her way near Krun and whispered into his ear, “I-I’ll tell you when we’re alone…”

As Mew wiggled her way back to her seat, she heard a soft voice ringing delicately in her ear. “Thanks, big sister Mew.” She turned around, slightly red on the cheeks, to see a young boy smiling charmingly.

However, unbeknownst to Mew, Krun thought, “My God. What a dumb bitch.” He continued turning those well-oiled gears in his head.

“She hasn’t reached the third level of Scathing Haze Qi yet… If I can reach the third level of Scathing Haze Qi before her, then I can probably win against Mew in a fight. If, conservatively, I don’t win against her, I should be able to escape from her. The problem is Opal. She has reached the third level. Maybe higher even. It seems unrealistic to reach a higher level of Scathing Haze Qi than her. I can’t brute force my way out of here.”

Krun looked at Mew and noticed that she kept averting her gaze away from Opal. He whispered to Mew, “Are you hiding something from Opal?”

“W-What are you saying? H-How did you… I mean, no, I’m not! How can I be hiding things from Opal? You jest…”

“I see… I must’ve misunderstood. Sorry for asking that.”

“N-No problem,” Mew said as her eyes darted around.

Krun let out an inconspicuous grin. “Yeah lady, you’re not fooling anyone. Finally, there’s something I can use against those two bitches who kidnapped me.” He made up his mind to find out what Mew was hiding from Opal.

After they finished their lunch, in arrived Krun’s most dreaded session of the day: Buying. Luckily, Mew already bought many cosmetics yesterday, so she only bought a handful of them this day, though Krun insisted they were still a handful too much. Opal silently agreed.

The trio settled down in an inn that evening. After eating some hard bread, Krun once again collapsed onto his bed due to exhaustion but was woken up shortly after.

“Shhh… Opal went to take a shower. We can talk now,” Mew spoke under her breath.

Although Krun was angry at Mew for disturbing his sleep, he knew this took priority over sleeping, so he pretended to be very keen to listen.

For the next ten minutes or so, Mew told Krun the secret history of the White Haze faction, and what life was like in this secretive White Haze Palace.

“Truly, truly well-kept secrets they are,” Krun thought as Mew spilled everything without hesitation.

Mew was not good at telling stories. She jumped around different events often and told them in a weird, non-chronological order, but Krun managed to get the gist of it.

It turned out that White Haze faction was an ancient faction, dating all the way back when Eustacia was unified, around three hundred years ago. It was said that around that time of unification came a legendary hero* called Yven. She led other heroes into battle, and finally unified the land. However, just when people thought Yven would be crowned as queen, she vanished and made Eusta, her subordinate at that time, king. This was how Eustacia came to be.

Krun heard this story from his friend Bamboo Stick before, but he didn’t know there was a continuation to the story.

Mew told Krun that after Yven gave up her throne, she lived a hermitical life in a mountain in Pana, which was near the south coast of Eustacia. Eusta wanted Yven to return and take the throne, but Yven would rather delve deep into the world of martial arts instead.

Reluctantly, Eusta let Yven be, but he still sent a huge sum of money and countless servants to her every year. About a decade later, the White Haze Palace was built, and the White Haze Faction was created. Many arts created by Yven were extremely powerful, but of course, the foundation of the White Haze faction was built on the unique realisation of Qi, which was written into the Scripture of the Scathing Haze.

But with the White Haze style of martial arts being so powerful, why was the faction still unheard of after many years? There were two reasons.

To Yven, martial arts were her hobby. She never liked using martial arts to fight or gain fame. She thought that her students should focus on the art instead of going outside and showing off their newfound skills. But Yven hated rules that restricted her students, so it wasn’t after she died was the rule of “not allowed outside without permission” created. That was the first reason.

As Yven grew older, she became more obsessed with a particular scripture told only in legends. Eventually, her body grew frail because she would forget to eat and sleep researching about it. Her students wanted her to stop because there was no evidence the scripture even existed, but Yven insisted that it was somewhere in Eustacia.

Yven died soon after she compiled her research and gave it to her successor. At that time, her successor did not believe the scripture was real, but after carefully reading through Yven’s research, her successor began to think Yven was up to something. It didn’t take long for this new faction head to be obsessed with the scripture. For the next hundreds of years, the White Haze faction dedicated itself to finding the whereabouts of the scripture, but to no avail. Because the faction didn’t bother itself with conflicts with other factions, it remained anonymous. That was the second reason.

Of course, the scripture was none other than the Parallel Scripture.

After Drey, the head of the Cosmic Variance faction, was defeated, the rumour saying that he once possessed the Parallel Scripture spread like wildfire. Imagine spending hundreds of years searching for something only to find it taken by some random person for himself, how would they feel? Understandably, Telhim, the then and current head of the White Haze faction was furious. He ordered his disciples to find the Parallel Scripture, and so, the students scattered across Eustacia, each hoping to find the scripture.

Mew also told Krun how living in the White Haze Palace was and how beautiful the palace was, but Krun did not pay much attention to it.

“Is it true? Does the Parallel Scripture really exist?” Krun fell asleep thinking about it.

*

Krun woke up in the middle of the night. He checked to see that the two girls were still sleeping.

He sat up straight and started performing a circulation. Although his hand was, like yesterday, tied to the bed frame, he was still allowed some movement, so he had no trouble getting into position.

It took about an hour for a circulation, much shorter than the last time. After that, he performed two more circulations, each shorter than the previous one.

Sweating, he took a deep breath. It felt incredible. There was more strength to his arms and legs than ever before. If he concentrated, he could feel something similar to a gush of air current flowing through his body, from head to toe, from right hand to left hand.

“Maybe I can start learning the next level soon…” Krun smiled as he went back to bed. “This time I didn’t get that intoxicating heat in my chest like last night… Is it because I mastered the first level of Scathing Haze Qi? Hahaha… Yeah, no.”

Krun was oblivious to the changes in his body, and soon, he would turn fifteen.

(*“Hero” shall be used as a gender-neutral term throughout this story.)

Wish Krun an early happy birthday by giving this a good rating!