Book 1. Shifting Winds. Chapter 7. Red Dragon School.

“How come you want to start training your body all of a sudden, Siana? You never wanted to train with me, no matter how I asked,” Laien inquired, looking for something good to wear in the wardrobe. He only had clothes fit for playing and training, but this time he needed to put on something presentable enough. He didn’t want to embarrass himself after Cran invited him to come, even more so now that Siana was tagging along.

“It’s just… Ehh, you are so insensitive, big brother. I’m not telling you.” Laien raised his eyebrows, confused. How was his question insensitive? “Uuu, she is becoming harder and harder to understand lately. Is that puberty?” he made such a stupid guess, leaving this worry for some other time.

“Big brother, can’t you just hurry up? How long are you going to look for clothes? Come on, just wear this. That should be fine, too.” Siana crouched at his side, easily finding two pieces of clothing to her liking. Laien was forced to admit that they really were better compared to what he wanted to wear; a simple white shirt and a pair of white pants, both with some additions of blue. He would probably look good enough.

Laien started changing at the spot, not minding that Siana was right next to him. The two of them have been living together in one room for the past three years and moreover, they were siblings. He saw no reason to be embarrassed.

Siana backed off by a few steps, pretending not to look, but still peeking at Laien, slightly interested in a boy’s body. She felt rather nervous, stealing glances when her big brother was completely naked, so after catching a bit too clear of a glimpse, she quickly turned around and tried to act as if nothing happened with her face burning red.

“What are you acting so embarrassed for? We even bathed together so many times…” Laien laughed, having noticed Siana’s obvious peeking. “If you want to take a look, just tell me, I don’t mind~” he even added carefreely.

He might not have minded, but Siana certainly did mind it quite a lot…

“Whoa!” Laien stopped the ball of water that was about to smash into his face as he turned around to look at Siana. Thankfully, he was much stronger now so he could easily cause a low-level spell like this one to halt with the aid of his Guardian. Otherwise, he would have gotten all wet… but now that he thought about it, he could remove all the water from his clothes if needed, so there wouldn’t be a problem anyway.

Siana, blushing wildly, jumped at Laien with an extremely angry expression. Having taken him off-guard, she unexpectedly managed to push him down on the floor. “Stupid! Stupid! You are so stupid big brother!” she yelled, smashing at Laien’s chest with her fists.

Laien chuckled helplessly, somehow getting worried about himself was Siana to become a high-ranked martial practitioner. “I’m sorry, okay? My bad, I apologize,” he attempted to reconcile, patting his little sister on her head.

Siana kept pouting at first, but then she sighed and laid down on top of him. “You are still stupid, big brother, but I love you,” she said quietly, forgiving him as easily as she had gotten angry at him.

Laien chuckled, barely hearing her last words. He sat down, causing Siana to slide down onto his laps. He hugged his litter sister, then said half-jokingly. “Your insensitive big brother loves you too~”

Siana muffled a laugh, feeling really happy and comfortable. All of the sudden, she felt like going back to sleep just like that. Maybe all the training could wait until tomorrow…

“Hey, we should get going. If we don’t find Cran at the morning assembly we will need to search the whole school grounds for him,” Laien reminded, standing up and lifting Siana to her feet at once. Seeing that his little sister was growing drowsy, he grabbed her hand and pulled her outside. “Geez, this sleepyhead. She was this resolute before, but now she is about to fall asleep,” Laien smiled helplessly, keeping those thoughts to himself.

---

They walked through the quiet streets, arriving at the gates of the Red Dragon School after a short while. The gate at the guard looked at them briefly, appearing to be really tired. He opened the gate wordlessly, letting the two siblings enter.

It wasn’t the first time at the Red Dragon School for Laien, however, it for Siana it was. She kept looking around, amazed that a ‘simple’ Martial School could take up so much space. Going by the size, the grounds of the Red Dragon School were even larger than the whole estate of the Valius family.

“A young master of this school is your friend, big brother? It’s amazing! You think he will agree to let me join it?” she asked, clearly excited by the prospect. Laien only smiled, telling her that he would ask. To be honest, he was pretty sure that Cran would agree to help Siana enroll, but he was worried about something else. The disciples of the Red Dragon School would learn that Siana was his younger sister soon and least to be said, his relationship with many of them wasn’t looking too good.

When he would bump into them in the city, quite a few of those disciples would try to bully him ‘because his eyes were looking down on them’, or something like that. True, he didn’t think that they were nice people after seeing them behave all rowdy at the bazaar, but he never even commented on what they were doing. Yet somehow, they still tried to pick on him…

One of those times, after bringing him to ‘teach him about the true martial practitioners’ in an alley close to their school, they a group of them had been beaten up by him. By coincidence, Cran had seen the whole thing and for some reason decided to help him out. Those disciples were forced to keep quiet about what happened and were told not to attack Laien ever again. A similar informal order had been issued by Cran throughout the ranks of young disciples of his school, too.

However, grudges wouldn’t be forgotten easily. Especially when one was young and haughty, it would be hard for him to let go of the past. Letting his little sister attend the same school as those people? Laien doubted whether it was such a good idea, but Siana would probably know how to take care of herself… he could lend a hand, too… “Aaah, I feel like I’m leaving too many problems for ‘later’ those past days,” Laien shook his head, deciding to go with the flow of events, at least for now.

After walking for a while, Laien and Siana entered the main hall of the outer section of the Red Dragon School, scoping well over ten thousand square meters and being totally devoid of any objects. From the looks of it, the very large hall was a devoted to being a gathering spot and not much else. The many disciples of various ages within the main hall were leisurely chatting with each other without any sense of urgency. The morning would, after all, be one of the rare times when they could socialize without being exhausted from the day-long training. It became somewhat of a tradition for everyone to gather and chat in the main hall, at least for the outer disciples.

As their arrival didn’t attract any special attention, Laien and Siana walked to the side and leaned against one of the wooden walls of the main hall and proceeded to quietly wait for Cran to show up. Given how prestigious the Red Dragon School was within the Sarkcente Kingdom, they felt rather nervous and didn’t want to cause any unnecessary trouble.

Leaning against the wall, Siana returned to her usual state. She concealed her emotions, stuffing them deep inside. She didn’t do it consciously, it was her natural behavior. Being with Laien, lately maybe even with Laien’s friends, she could be herself. However, for some reason she didn’t like to socialize with people she didn’t know and she wasn’t interested in getting to know them, either. All of that resulted in her ice-princess act and inability to make friends by herself.

“Hey, look there. It’s that brat, you know which one, the disciple of that crazy old fart. What is he doing here?” one male disciple whispered to his friends. He appeared to be around fifteen or sixteen years old and more importantly, he had heard from his younger cousin that a kid called Laien used his relationship with young master Cran and had beaten him up for no reason. If he remembered correctly, it should have happened around a year ago.

“That’s the one who bullied our younger disciples? He even dares to show up to our school and stay in the open. Even if he is a friend of the young master, how can we tolerate this disgrace?” another male disciple commented, displeased by Laien’s presence in their school.

“Did he bring his girlfriend with him? Heh, let’s teach him a lesson. He can’t be allowed to look down on our Red Dragon School,” someone else suggested, eager to relieve some of his pent-up stress. He and his friends were all fairly senior disciples among the outer sect, they have all reached the fifth Mortal Realm and would soon be promoted to the inner sect. With their position within the school being fairly secure, they had no qualms about bullying one brat a little bit. As long as they didn’t go too far, the young master wouldn’t be able to punish them in any way.

Either way, it wasn’t like Cran had such a large degree of influence within the school. He was a core disciple and the son of the co-founder of the Red Dragon School, but three years ago, after having been refused apprenticeship by the founder, his uncle, he had lost a fair amount of his personal power. Or at the very least, it was how it felt to those in the outer sect, who saw Cran grow more level-headed and not as prone to stir up trouble throughout the last three years.

“Aaah, as I thought, problems are coming, huh…” Laien rolled his eyes, closing them beforehand so no one would notice. He spotted the four teenage disciples walking towards him and Siana through the hall quite early, as they were being so apparent about their intentions that a scene was already being caused. The six hundred disciples were intrigued by what was going on, so even before the four reached Laien and Siana, they already became the center of attention.

“Oi, brat. You aren’t one of our disciples. What are you doing here?” the short-haired youth spoke up in a loud voice. He obviously intended to make a spectacle out of the whole thing.

“Third brother, I don’t think he knows that only our disciples are allowed here,” the tallest of the four commented sarcastically and laughed at his own words.

“How can he not know, first brother? Look, even after we explained it to him, he is still standing there with his girl, ignoring us and all,” the short-haired youth added, stepping closer to the two siblings.

Laien felt like rolling his eyes again. With these four surrounding them, even if they wanted they wouldn’t be able to walk away. He wanted to rebuke them, but…

“Stop bothering us,” everyone fell silent as Siana’s loud voice echoed unnaturally throughout the hall. No one expected the very young girl to speak up so loudly and yet, so indifferently and disdainfully.

Siana gazed briefly at the four youths, then sighed quietly and no longer paid them any attention, her expression and body language saying ‘you are not worthy of my time’.

Laien smiled helplessly, wondering what would happen if his little sister behaved so rudely in front of someone too strong or influential for him to handle. He noted to himself that they would need to talk about it later, as to avoid a disaster from happening one day.

The ‘third brother’ snapped out of the shock before anyone else. He closed onto Siana with an annoyed expression, only to be blocked by Laien who stepped in between immediately.

“Out of my way!” the short-tempered youth shouted, lifting his hand with the intention of slapping Laien in the face with an open palm. It might not have seemed as much, but given how strong a martial practitioner of the fifth rank could be, a simple palm like that would be more than enough to heavily wound any normal ten-year-old kid.

Laien smirked, preparing to use his magic, but at that very moment, an angry, Qi-amplified yell resounded throughout the main hall.

“I wouldn’t do it If I were you!”

The painfully loud shout made many disciples cover their ears. Everyone turned to look who the one shouting was and seeing that it was none other than Cran, they hurriedly made a way for him to pass through.

“You are lucky you stopped. It could have been quite dangerous,” Cran said with a laugh, gesturing the four to move away from his guests.

The short-haired youth was unable to cool down quickly enough, so he brought up angrily. “Young master, no matter how close friends you are with this person, you shouldn’t threaten your fellow disciples!” he ended up raising his voice, once again making the hall go completely silent.

Cran snickered, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean in this way. What I was saying, is that ‘this person’ is strong enough to have killed you be an accident. You know, magic is not as accurate as our martial arts.” Cran said carefreely, walking past the four teenagers and exchanging a shake of the hand with Laien. He gave Siana a curious look, then gestured the two siblings to follow him.

Leaving everyone confused, the three of them left to the main hall of the outer section. Dumbfounded, the short-haired youth laughed nervously and asked aloud. “He was just joking, right? I mean, a kid like that…” he chuckled awkwardly, hoping that Cran had been making fun of him.

“Maybe that’s why young master favors him so much. It would make sense… He never got friendly with any of us, but he made friends with a kid who wasn’t even a part of our school,” someone guessed aloud. Some agreed with them, while others weren’t convinced. Regardless, they would sooner or later learn the truth.

---

“I’m sorry about this welcome, our disciples tend to have rough tempers,” Cran said apologetically, leading Laien and Siana through a dark corridor that gave off an old, ancient feeling. “Anyway, why did you bring your sister along?” he asked afterward, looking like he wanted to say something else, but decided not to.

“She said she wanted to learn martial arts and tagged along. Do you think it would be possible to enroll her in your school?” Laien went straight to the matter, throwing Cran off a little bit.

Cran took a deep breath, then eyed Siana and responded seriously. “From the looks of it, she has never trained before, eh? It might make things easier, though. If her talent is good enough, I can ask one of our Elders to take her in as his disciple. She would receive high-quality training from the scratch, however, she will need to devote herself to our school if she wants to learn our Red Dragon Arts. Although, that’s going to be a few years in the future, when she reached the peak of the fifth Mortal Realm, so that’s not a worry for today,” Cran finished and gave Laien a look saying ‘how about that’. He offered them the very best conditions, under the requirement of Siana having a high enough potential.

Laien didn’t hide how surprised he was, causing Cran to smiled happily, pleased to see an honest reaction.

“Haha, don’t mind this little help from me. You can just do me a favor in the future,” Cran assured Laien and tousled his hair, just like an elder brother would. But why did he? Laien could only wonder. Was Cran really looking forward to becoming friends with him for the sake of future?

“How am I ever going to repay all of that?” Laien asked with a laugh, then glanced at his little sister. Despite her seemingly emotionless expression, he could tell that she was pretty appealed by this proposition of Cran’s.

“How about sparring with me, to make a good beginning? I will be leaving exactly in three weeks. We won’t have many chances left to fight, unfortunately.” Cran sighed, leading Laien and Siana to the small private training ground located at the inner sections of the school. He unsheathed his longsword and walked to the middle of the ground, inviting Laien to come over.

“I’ve always wondered, why did you help me back then, when I got into a fight with those disciples from your school? And asked only to spar with you in exchange?” Laien inquired, interested in finding out the exact reason. At the same time, he pulled his short sword out, then roused the Qi in his body. As he was yet to learn a Qi Manipulating Art, that was the extent of the preparations he could do before sparring, at least as far as the martial aspect of his abilities went.

Siana seated herself on the wooden terrace, observing Laien and Cran while wondering why boys always seemed to enjoy sparring and fighting so much. Wasn’t that only training to get stronger? What was so fun in doing that? She didn’t understand at all.

“Why? Hah, now that we are getting along a bit better, I can tell you. You probably aren’t aware of it, but you release an incredibly powerful killing intent when you fight for real. How come it’s like that, I have no idea! Come on!” Impatient to start, Cran started attacking Laien with fast, light slashes and ended up raising his voice out of excitement. However, he didn’t forget to properly adjust himself to Laien’s level, as to not overpower him instantly.

“Killing intent?” Laien asked, blocking Cran’s attacks half-consciously. After training under Master Shire for so long, this level of swordplay was like a child’s play for him. Moreover, Cran was going easy on him, too. How could he possibly be pressured in this situation? “Even if I do release some kind of killing intent, what kind of benefit is that to you?” Laien inquired further, not quite understanding Cran’s reasoning. Was getting used to killing intent so important to a martial practitioner? Couldn’t he just request to fight with one of the strong Elders from his school, or with his father?

“Ha, Master Shire taught you to fight well, but he didn’t even explain something so basic? He must have felt your killing intent too, just like I did. Hah, then, let me explain!” Cran slowly added more variety to his attacks, not only slashing simply from the sides, but also attacking Laien’s legs, stabbing, or aiming at his forearms with quickly slashes right after their blades crossed. As they were warming up, he continued the explanation.

“Apart from the three Primary Arts that are essential to any martial practitioners, there exists something called ‘battle sense’! It’s an ability one can usually awaken and sharpen only after entering the Realm of Heroes! Yet, thanks to your ridiculously strong killing intent and a bit of luck, I awakened it! Then, I sharpened it through training and sparring with you!” Cran was becoming more and more excited as he talked, his attack becoming more vicious without him noticing. He was so happy for himself, that he starting to forget to hold back. A slight thread of blood-red Qi suddenly enveloped Cran’s longsword…

Laien, noticing that… no, rather sensing it, reacted intuitively. He disregarded any common logic and poured his spiritual energy into his short sword, then allowed the blades to clash.

The blood-red Qi and the deep-blue spiritual energy collided, resulting in a very peculiar interaction. Firstly, Laien’s short sword shattered into pieces, unable to withstand a serious blow from Cran, who after all, was a powerful martial practitioner! A very loud sound of metal shattering resounded within the training grounds, reaching even the far away inner quarters of the Red Dragon School. From the point of impact, a surge of wind exploded outwards with considerable force, rising up some sand and sending it all around.

As for the second thing that happened… it wasn’t yet too obvious to anyone but Cran.

“Big brother!” Siana stood up and ran to Laien’s side, but quickly calmed down, seeing that her big brother was all right, just a little shaky. His short sword broke into many pieces, he was thrown backward by the force and fell on his butt, but all in all, he didn’t seem to be wounded.

“Good Heavens, what was that? My head is spinning and I am about to lose it… Urgh…” Cran put a hand to his mouth, trying to stop himself from vomiting. He managed to hold it in, however, after forcefully swallowing everything back, his expression turned quite ugly. Compared to Laien, his weapon was in a perfect state, but his condition itself was quite a bit worse off.

“Don’t blame me, it was you who recklessly used your Qi to attack. How was I supposed to defend? Aah, my ears are still ringing. At least you didn’t break my hand, I think. It’s numb all over… I will need a new sword, though, heh…” Laien commented resignedly, shaking his head. Cran had never before gotten so fired up during any of their sparrings. He shouldn’t have been a reckless person like that, but today, he really went overboard.

“You are already at the eighth mortal realm, hold back a little, for my sake, would you?” Laien added with a sigh, causing Cran to frown and wonder in confusion. Had he ever told anyone about his recent advancement from seventh to eighth mortal realm? Even his father didn’t know, so apart from Elders who could have directly inspected his cultivation base with their battle sense, no one should have known.

“How do you know that I am at the eighth Mortal Realm? And how did you react in time, anyway? Don’t tell me you awakened a battle sense of your own?” Cran asked with disbelief. If Laien really has had awakened his battle sense at the age of ten, that would be way too ridiculous. Wasn’t he only at the third Mortal Realm as a martial practitioner, anyway? It shouldn’t be possible by any means…!

“Dunno. I kind of felt when you used your Qi, I knew how strong it was and where you applied it. I ‘saw’ how you pulled it out from your Qi Origin... Is that what this ‘battle sense’ does?” Laien explained, as curious as Cran about the answer. He smiled when Siana sat at his side and leaned against him. She seemed to be a bit sleepy… It really was too early of an hour for her, who liked to sleep in.

“No… That’s not how it should work. For me, it’s closer to an ‘instinct’. Apart from feeling killing intent, I can tell if someone has bad intentions, or I can predict their movements in a fight really well just by looking. I can sense the presence of Qi or spiritual energy, but nothing close to what you described. I can’t even tell how strong your spiritual cultivation is. Maybe what you have is the spiritual sense of a Magus at the Realm of Heroes? I am not too clear about that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you had it,” Cran mused aloud, colors already returning to his face. He stretched, then gave Laien an expectant look.

“Haha, that would be nice if I had a spiritual sense. About our spar, do we continue?” Laien asked, smiling happily. His arm was better already, he would have no problems if they were to keep fighting.

“You still want to continue?!” Siana called out in disbelief. Boys… they were so stupid!

Cran and Laien laughed, amused by Siana’s reaction. They exchanged a short look, after what Cran spoke up. “We might later, but we should get your brother a new sword to begin with. Let’s go to the Elders Hall. We can ask for a good sword for you there and test your sister’s aptitude, too.” Cran extended his hand, intending to help Laien stand up. Laien chuckled and helped himself up, still feeling somewhat strange about being this familiar with Cran. Yet somehow, it did not feel too bad at all.

“Hey, I’m still there, you know?” Siana pouted, seeing the boys get all mushy with each other. However, all she achieved was making Laien and Cran exchange a glance and burst out laughing.

Afterwards, it took them quite some time to apologize to Siana and to make her stop sulking.

---

When the three of them arrived at the Elders hall, they saw two old men sitting at the table beside a fireplace and chatting with each other.

“Greetings, Elder Hauman. Greetings, Elder Bumne,” Cran called out, gesturing at Laien and Siana to come closer. The two siblings bowed respectfully, then repeated the formal greetings.

“Ho, who have you brought us, Cran? Was this noise from before perhaps created by you and them?” Elder Hauman stood up, appraising the two youths with his experienced gaze. Elder Bumne remained seated, showing less interest in Cran’s arrival.

“This boy is my dear friend, the turmoil you heard was caused by our little sparring. I brought him here to look for a new weapon for him since we managed to break his old one,” Cran explained with a smile, omitting the less important details. He was quite sure that Elder Hauman wasn’t interested in hearing the whole story, anyway.

At the table, Elder Bumne raised an eyebrow and gave Cran a questioning look. To give a precious weapon from the core sect’s resources to an outsider, Cran must have valued this boy quite highly. Regrettably, Cran was authorized to do so, so he couldn’t voice any complaints about the idea.

“I am Laien, pleased to meet you, Elder Hauman,” Laien bowed yet again after Cran introduced him, this time a bit more lightly.

“Hmmm, good, good. You know how to respect your elders. Go ahead, find something you like, boy. Since young master took a liking to you, you are our Red Dragon School’s friend.” Nodding to himself, Elder Hauman turned his head to look at Siana, then gazed at Cran expectantly.

“This girl is Siana. Laien’s little sister, eight years old. She never practiced martial arts before. Elder Hauman, I know you are busy, but would you be willing to take her as a disciple if her talent proves good enough? Please hear to this request of mine,” Cran actually bowed his head, putting Elder Hauman in a hard spot. Siana followed Cran’s example and bowed, too.

“I truly don’t have time to raise another disciple now, Cran. Why don’t you ask Elder Bumne here? He has always been good at handling young ones, although he tends to be a bit cold towards them,” Elder Hauman refused tacitly, throwing the responsibility for granting Cran’s request onto his friend.

Elder Bumne frowned, but unable to refuse directly, he said in a low, rather displeased voice. “Only if her talent proves to be good enough. Follow me, we will test her immediately.” Despite what he was saying, Elder Bumne already decided to flat out refuse this request. He wasn’t about to start doing favors for Cran, as their relationship had never been too close. Dealing with a disciple who never trained before… it was too much work!

Not even a minute later, they arrived in a medium-sized room inside which only one thing was being displayed. Precisely, an impressive looking longsword hung from the walk in front of the entrance, sheathed in a scabbard in the shape of a dragon. The ancient weapon emanated a menacing aura, making it apparent that it was a very precious artifact of the Red Dragon School.

Elder Bumne took the sword in his hand and held it right in front of Siana. “Unsheathe it, concentrate your will on the blade and swing with all your might,” he explained almost mechanically, very used to testing new students applying to become Core Disciples in this manner. The ‘Red Dragon Sword’ would resonate with a person’s Qi Origin and according to one’s potential, would react in a different way. The better one’s aptitude for martial arts was, the stronger the reaction would be. There were other ways to measure one’s talent, obviously, but this method was the easiest and quickest out of all of them.

When explaining what to do, Elder Bumne even said the phrase ‘concentrate your will’ only as a part of his usual sentence and didn’t bother to give Siana a detailed explanation. In his eyes, an eight years old girl who never practiced martial arts would have no idea what ‘focusing one’s will’ truly meant anyway, so he couldn’t be bothered to be wasting his breath.

Siana took a long look at the sheathed longsword, not noticing that Elder Bumne was growing impatient, neither paying attention to Laien and Cran who were getting worried. She focused, trying to hear this very quiet, distant voice… Finally, she unconsciously reached out with her hand and grabbed the heavy longsword. Her gaze appearing to be absent as she unsheathed the silvery blade of the Red Dragon Sword. She grabbed the hilt with both hands, allowing the blood red scabbard to fall to the ground to Elder Bumne’s fury. However, before the man had a chance to voice his anger, she took a swing above her head and slashed down.

Instantly, the Heaven-piercing roar of a Dragon resounded in the room and enveloped the whole Red Dragon School, frightening the tens of thousands of outer, inner and core disciples. Even the few Elders present within the grounds jumped up as the mighty roar reached their ears. They all knew… that the second Red Dragon Sword has just chosen its master!

Meanwhile, Elder Bumne, shocked out of his mind, stared at the completely shattered section of three consecutive walls, each bearing the marks of five claws of a Dragon. He blinked, his mouth opening and closing repeatedly. He looked at the little girl who stood there as if mesmerized, holding the ancient longsword from which surged a powerful blood-red aura.

The crimson energy engulfed Siana’s body for a second, then retracted to the sword itself. As it did, Siana fell to her knees and sat on the floor, breathing heavily.

Elder Bumne and Cran were speechless, completely flabbergasted. However, Laien laughed quietly and said with a wide smile.

“Amazing.”