Book 1. Shifting Winds. Chapter 16. One Year of Time. (Part II)

The bottom of the lake in itself wasn’t that far below, merely one hundred meters away or so; with how clear the water was, it could already be seen quite clearly. However, there was something special there, something that could be seen only during the summer and only for about three hours around the noon.

As the rays of the sun slowly shifted, Laien’s eyes went wide. It wasn’t quite the middle of this huge lake, but at the bottom of it… there was a huge crater-like hole; it’s walls littered with thousands of shining crystals. The underground cave was over four hundred meters wide and even though something like a kilometer of it had been lit up, it seemed to stretch infinitely deeper into the ground. With each passing second, the sun was getting higher in the sky and thus, revealed a few more meters of it.

Rudford grabbed Laien’s shoulder lightly, then smiled at him and pointed downwards. Feeling his heart throb wildly, Laien began swimming deeper down shoulder-to-shoulder with Rudford.

The moment he got close to the entrance to the huge cave, he felt the water, slightly hotter than the one above him flowing out of the cave at a slow, steady pace.

“It’s coming from underground…!” Laien was amazed. The Eye of the Netherworld… the name of this lake suddenly started making a lot of sense.

As they were swimming, Laien looked around at the beautiful, diamond-like crystals. He noticed some strange, algae-like plants growing in the nicks on the walls and the small, colorful fishes which were hiding behind them. “So amazing…” he thought, wondering why no one in the country was speaking about the wonders of this lake.

“Maybe it’s to avoid intruders?” he wondered, guessing that there would be many people who would flock here to pick up the crystals from the walls of this cave.

Around the six hundred meters mark, Laien began feeling the pressure of water grow a bit painful. He pulled upon his spiritual energy and covered himself with a thin membrane, lowering the force pressing onto him by more than a half without much effort; mainly thanks to the defensive properties of the Aspect of Tranquility.

He felt Rudford touch his shoulder again, so he looked to the side. Rudford pointed at a specific palace at the wall with his finger and gestured him to follow, so he did.

When they got a bit closer, Laien saw a ring-sized piece of dark stone stuck onto the wall. After a second or two, though, he realized that the thing wasn’t just a stone; it was slightly shiny, just like… the rings on his and Rudford’s fingers! It was actually a piece of black gold!

Rudford pointed at the stone-like piece of black gold once more and smiled at him. “It’s fine if we take it?” Laien wanted to ask and apparently, was understood simply through the expression on his face as Rudford nodded at him.

“Will be a nice souvenir,” Laien thought happily and reached out to the piece of black gold. He wanted to yank it off but failed. He then tried to crush the rocks around it with his fingers but failed again. Slightly annoyed, he used magic and controlled some water to pierce the wall… yet, he failed again!

“How hard is this thing?!” he wanted to say, but could only raise his eyebrows. He saw Rudford chuckling out of the corner of his eye and frowned a bit. Was he being made fun of?

Apparently, Rudford wanted to help him out, but he blocked him with his hand. There was still one more thing he could do to get this piece of black gold out on his own. He put his fingers on the wall around the piece of black gold, a few centimeters away from it. Then, he concentrated and made use of the Principle of Energy.

First, the stone turned lighter in shade and the water around it turned into ice. A few seconds later, the ice melted abruptly and the small amount of water around the piece of black gold began boiling.

Due to the quick and extreme change in temperature, the wall cracked and released the piece of black gold along with some rocks still sticking to it into Laien’s hand. Content with this much, Laien pulled the whole thing into his interspatial ring and gave Rudford a cheeky smile.

Rudford laughed, then pointed downwards again and asked wordlessly if Laien would be fine to go deeper. In response, Laien drew one and three zeros in the air, or rather in the water with his finger. He would be fine going more or less three hundred meters deeper than they were now, but not much more.

Rudford nodded and gestured Laien to follow him, this time heading to the opposite side of the cave.

The two of them swam for around two minutes and then, Laien was shocked again. It was placed at an angle making it impossible to see from higher up, but there was yet another cave in the wall. It was around one meter wide and by the looks of it, Rudford was planning to have them swim right inside it!

Excited to find out what was further in, Laien followed Rudford without hesitation. They got into the small cave and began making their way deeper into it. Given that there was less space available, they pulled themselves forward by the walls instead of swimming. It soon got completely dark, but they continued to swim and soon, crossed the distance of around one hundred meters only to find…

“Light?” Laien was surprised once again. How come that ahead of them, there seemed to be some kind of a light source? “These are… illuminating algae?” he realized as they swam into the latter part of the cave, where walls were sparsely filled with this strange kind of a plant.

A few dozen meters further, the cave suddenly began going up. “There’s actually a surface? There’s air inside?” Laien was flabbergasted; a few seconds later Rudford surfaced and so did he.

They ended up in a medium-sized cavern. just about three meters high and six, seven meters wide. The cavern was filled with a dim, green light of illuminating algae. As he was looking around, Laien gasped. This place was… totally amazing!

“Incredible,” Laien uttered quietly and gazed at Rudford, who got out of the water and sat on the unexpectedly flat stone surface beside it.

“Not many people know of this place,” Rudford said with a smile and reached out with his hand, which Laien grabbed and allowed himself to be pulled out of the water. “There are some similar caverns further down below, too, but the air in them is toxic. This is one of the few where it’s safe to sit for a few hours,” he explained, feeling quite pleased with the amazed and happy look on Laien’s face.

“It’s great,” Laien could only say, having no words to describe how excited he was to be in such an amazing and cool place.

“You remember the ‘calm phase’ I mentioned?” Rudford said with a smile and after getting a curious look from Laien, he laughed and proceeded to explain. “More or less once per month, this whole underground cave erupts with masses of boiling water for a few seconds. The heat is strong enough to melt the rocks, while the eruption itself brings diamonds, black gold and many other precious materials from deep, deep underground.”

“Once, a curious Great Master tried to reach the bottom of the ‘Eye of the Netherworld’, but was forced to give up after going around ten kilometers deep,” Rudford added and laughed a little, seeing the look of honest amazement in Laien’s eyes. He had reacted similarly when he came here for the first time during the times of the Great War.

“So, those stones on the walls…?” Laien asked, a certain connection having just been made in his mind.

“They are diamonds, all of them,” Rudford confirmed, then added with a laugh. “As you probably guessed, you can’t mention this place to anyone who hadn’t been here before, even to your little sister. If word about this cave gets out, the royal family will need to put an annoyingly greater number of martial masters to guard the lake.”

Laien nodded, imprinting the ‘do not talk about today’ idea into his mind as to not blabber about it by an accident.

“Let’s stay here for a bit longer, then I will bring you to the ‘Dream Island’,” Rudford said with a chuckle. In his opinion, the name wasn’t too exaggerated as the island truly was like a small paradise.

“Mhm,” Laien confirmed energetically. This day was great already, but was it about to get even better? He really would be hard pressed to recall any time he had been as happy as was right now.

---

“That’s the island? What are those strange trees growing there?” Laien asked as he and Rudford were finally approaching the ‘Dream Island’ after swimming for nearly two hours.

“Those are palm trees and banana trees,” Rudford replied and glanced at Laien, who appeared to be rather tired after swimming for such a long time. “Well, there is a great place at this island where we will be able to rest,” he thought quietly, feeling a bit guilty about making Laien work-out so hard on his supposedly ‘free day’.

Thankfully, the island wasn’t that far away anymore and after five minutes or so, the two of them walked out of the water and entered the inner beach of the crescent-shaped island.

Laien sat down on the sand and took a few deep breaths, relaxing and letting his muscles rest for a bit. Rudford sat beside him, in no hurry to go anywhere. Only half a day has passed so far, they still had around six to seven hours until they would need to go back to the inn and head back to Neil City on their horses.

“Somebody is coming?” Laien looked to the left, noticing a group of eight people approaching from afar. Six of them were adults and two were youths of around fifteen, sixteen years of age. Judging by the clothing of the adults and the swimming trunks the two teenagers, the six were guards and the two were some kind of young masters.

“The bear sigil, must by the Thurand family,” Rudford recognized easily, still remembering very well how ferociously the warriors of the Thurand family had fought during the Great War.

Amongst the three Great Families, he saw them as the ones most deserving of their status, land and money. The Thurand family had even founded one of the four Great Cities of the Sarkcente Kingdom on their own about eight hundred years ago, which to this day was called simply ‘Thurand City’. Of the three Great Families, they definitely were the one with most prestige and deepest roots.

As for the Valius family and the Cioze family? Rudford had no negative feelings towards them, but no positive ones either.

“Want to hang out with them?” Rudford asked, thinking that chatting with someone closer to his own age would be more interesting for Laien.

“Nah,” Laien said without a second thought. He preferred to spend time with Rudford a hundred times over compared to hanging out with some young masters, even if they happened to turn out very likable.

Rudford smiled helplessly but admittedly, he was happy with Laien’s swift response. He didn’t even know when, but he had gotten quite attached to this cheeky youth and started treating him akin to a younger brother, or perhaps a son he has never had. The time he was spending with Laien had long since become something he thoroughly enjoyed and looked forward to.

“You two, who are you and what are you doing here?” one of the two teenage youths called out after their group got closer to Laien and Rudford, his words and the tone of his voice suggesting very clearly that he didn’t see the two in any regard at all. On the contrary, it looked like he was angry at them for some reason…?

Laien smiled disbelievingly and raised his eyebrows. He glanced at Rudford, then realized that the two of them were wearing simple trunks and remembered that Rudford hadn’t shown himself in public for a century. It made sense that they weren’t recognized.

Rudford smiled at Laien, knowing this pupil of his well enough to understand that he was amused by the situation at hand. In his younger days, he himself had risen to fame too swiftly to ever experience similar events, but sure enough had nothing against letting the two young masters make fools out of themselves for a bit.

“Why aren’t you answering?” the other one of the boys spoke up, apparently trying to make his voice sound threatening. “Let me guess, you are another happy-go-lucky travelers who ‘just happened to stumble upon this island?” the youth asked sarcastically. “Really, the royal family should employ more men to guard this place,” he complained discontentedly and signaled one of his men to get moving with a slight movement of his head.

Laien suppressed a laugh, finding difficult to believe that something like this was actually happening. However, the smile disappeared from his face when he sensed a calm, somewhat resigned killing intent from the man who started walking towards them.

“Technically, we should send you over to the royal guards who are stationed around the lake…” the man said with a sigh. “However, our young masters are tired of having more and more people flocking here. Sorry pals, it’s your unlucky day,” the man said resignedly and took out a sword from his interspatial ring, releasing and covering his body with a layer of Qi of the second Realm of Heroes.

“For the Thurand family to have fallen so low,” Rudford shook his head and stood up, giving the two teenagers a disdainful look. Killing a man and a kid just like that, without any justification, merely on a whim? If their ancestors who had fought and died from them saw what they were doing, they would be rolling over in their graves in shame.

The man who stood just a few meters from Rudford hesitated. Even though the person in front of him didn’t rouse his Qi, he could somewhat tell that this crimson-haired man wasn’t normal. He had a feeling that if he were to attack him, he would end up dead in an instant.

“You didn’t get what you are supposed to do? Hurry up and get rid of them,” the teenage youth who had signaled the man to take action reprimanded sternly, failing to understand why his subordinate stopped all of the sudden. So what if these two recognized the sigil of the Thurand family? Everyone if the Sarkcente Kingdom knew the bear was the mark of their family! There was no reason to hesitate just because of an insignificant thing like this one.

“Is the punishment for intruding the Eye of the Netherworld Lake without permission death?” Laien asked, looking at the teenage youth who just spoke.

The youth however only snorted, seeing no reason to lower himself to talking with someone who was about to die.

“It’s not,” Rudford said calmly, feeling like these two young masters of the Thurand family needed to be taught a tough lesson.

“So what if it’s not?” the other of the two teenagers said disdainfully. “Two corpses won’t go complaining to the royal guards. Now, if you would hurry up?” the youth urged his guard, getting annoyed at the pointless chit-chat which emerged for no reason.

“Ugh,” the man suppressed a groan. His family had a tremendous debt of gratitude to the Thurand family, so he couldn’t afford not to listen to the commands of the two young masters with whose protection he was tasked. With no other choice, he gripped the hilt of his sword tighter and took a step forward… but froze in place the next second, when the red-haired man before him finally decided to rouse his Qi and release his aura.

“S-seventh Realm of Heroes…!” the man uttered and hurriedly retreated, frightened out of his wits. All the blood drew from his face as he understood what kind of grave mistake he had been about to make. Now, he truly felt as if he was looking the death itself in the eye…!

The man’s five companions, despite being martial masters were equally shocked. Against someone at the seventh Realm of Heroes, they didn’t stand a chance! Forget about the six of them, even one thousand martial masters of the first and second ranks wouldn’t compare to one expert who had reached the seventh Realm of Heroes…! The difference in strength was simply too great…!

The two teenage youths, who until now had displayed a haughty attitude were shaking like leafs in the wind. They were too weak to tell which realm Rudford’s aura belonged to, but they could tell how much more powerful it was compared to their guards’; the frightened words which one of whom uttered having disillusioned them completely.

They had actually… actually ordered an ultimate expert to be killed along with the child he was accompanying, then even confirmed they didn’t care about going against the law…!

What… just what in the world were they supposed to do or say now?

“Why don’t the two of you do the first thing you should have and introduce yourselves?” Rudford said sourly and crossed his arms over his chest.

The two teenagers had trouble with letting their voices out of their clenched throats, but the one who had ordered their guards to act managed to say.

“I’m Zakar Thurand and that’s my cousin, Nail Thurand,” the fifteen-year-old said in a shaky voice, for the first time ever feeling truly scared for his life.

“So, Zakar, Nail,” Rudford began saying. “Tell me, is there anything stopping me from turning the eight of you into corpses which won’t go complaining to the royal guards?” he asked with a smirk and glanced at Nail, whose very own words he used to mock him.

The two youths shivered, their minds as blank as a sheet of paper. They were so scared that they didn’t even notice or were bothered by the smirk on Laien’s face. At the moment, all they were concerned with was finding a way to appease the expert in front of them.

“W-we will give you anything you want, senior, just forgive us,” Zakar said weakly, unable to come up with anything else.

“Riches?” Rudford laughed and shook his head the second time. “Do you think that as the founder of the Red Dragon School, I lack wealth?” he asked, revealing his identity to the two youths of the Thurand family and their guards.

As expected, the two teenagers became even more terrified; if that was even possible. Dear Heavens, what did the Red Dragon School represent? If what they did today came to the light, then not to speak of Rudford killing them; their own parents would beat them to death in their fury!

“So pitiable,” Rudford said with a resigned sigh, seeing that he couldn’t expect either of the two to come up with any other thing to say. He truly wondered how had it not yet occur to them to kowtow, admit their mistakes and ask for forgiveness? Were they really spoiled to the extent of being unable to do something so basic?

“Shouldn’t you at least try apologizing?” Laien spoke up as if reading Rudford’s mind. However, in fact, he was thinking back to how he had been forced to kowtow and plead before Jasi even though he hadn’t done anything wrong. These two obviously had, but couldn’t think to offer an apology? What was up with those ‘Great Families’ to constantly produce rotten young masters with a frightening regularity?

“You’d do well if you listened to this advice,” Rudford said with a slight smile and glanced at Laien approvingly. These words coming out of the mouth of a kid younger than them would surely have a much stronger and long-lasting effect on the two young masters of the Thurand family.

The youths seemed to have come back to their senses and immediately fell to their knees and bowed so low that their foreheads touched the sand. The six guards of theirs did the same thing, too scared to consider not kowtowing.

“We were in the wrong, please forgive us Great Master Rudford!”

“It was wrong of us, we will never act like this ever again!”

The two said one after another and waited for Rudford to say anything. They were genuinely scared that despite the apology, Rudford would only laugh at them and kill them all.

“You wanted to unjustly kill two people,” Rudford said calmly, withdrawing his aura and calming his Qi. “To compensate for it, each of you shall do two good deeds. As for what kind of… it’s up for you to decide,” he stated, relieving the two youths and their guards from the stress they had been in the whole time.

“For the sake of the elders of your family, I truly hope you will change for better in the future,” Rudford added with a sigh.

The two youths raised their heads carefully and looked at Rudford. They had never paid much mind to the preaching of their parents and teachers, seeing their words as nothing but empty talk… but being told the same thing by none other than the Great Master Rudford, especially after what they did, made them take this advice to heart.

“Eh, that wasn’t the most pleasant memory to make, eh?” Rudford said and gave Laien an apologetic look. Had it been only as much as the two teenagers being rude to them and learning who they were talking to afterward, it would have been a thing to laugh at. Yet, what happened turned out to be a serious, stern lesson.

“Not really,” Laien disagreed with a smile. “I think it was pretty cool how you handled it,” he said and smiled wryly. Instead of threatening or punishing the two, Rudford made them do something good for someone else. It was an incomparably wiser path to take, one of which he wouldn’t have thought on his own.

“You really think so?” Rudford asked with a laugh, pretty much ignoring the flabbergasted gazes of the eight people who were stunned to see him have such a casual conversation with the youth who most likely was his disciple.

“Either way, there are hot springs on this island. Their waters have healing and regenerating properties, so they are excellent to wash away fatigue. Unless you’ve had enough water for today?” Rudford inquired with a smile. They could always simply rest on the beach and enjoy some coconuts and bananas if that was what Laien would rather do.

“I’m a water-element practitioner, how could I ever have enough of water?” Laien replied with a question of his own, his lips curving upwards into a merry smile. Hot springs that could help him with his stiff muscles in a natural way? He couldn’t ask for anything better!

“Okay, so let’s get going,” Rudford nodded and headed off with Laien at his side.