Book 2. The Grand Gathering. Chapter 6. The Request. (Part I)

“Flying directly into the ground of our Red Dragon School? Talk about impertinent,” one of the Elders returning from the Two Weeks City murmured discontentedly. Were it not for the azure Heavenly Flames which carried that person, he definitely wouldn’t have stood for such arrogance, but even their Red Dragon School wouldn’t want to needlessly offend the overlords of the Sarkcente Kingdom.

“Wait a second, isn’t that Laien?” the Elder noticed when the disc of azure flames got further away from him and lowered its altitude. “They went straight to Rudford’s place, what’s going on?” the man wondered, deciding to head over to the meeting hall in the core section of the school. If any news surfaced, he would be one of the first to learn of them.

---

“I thought this Qi seemed familiar and here you are,” Rudford said with a laugh, eyeing Injar with interest. “The proud and always frustrated by everything kid from back then turned into a man, who would have thought,” he said teasingly and chuckled, recalling how Injar used to pester him and all the strongest experts for spars when he was young.

“You were always getting on my nerves back then and it doesn’t seem to have changed,” Injar responded with a helpless chuckle. To have Rudford mention his younger days in front of Laien… it was quite embarrassing indeed.

“Ho? Looks like your temperament got a little better,” Rudford said with a smile. “I’ve heard you are playing the role of a guardian to one of the Royal Children. So, what has Laien done that you needed to personally come to talk with me?” he asked wryly and gave Laien a quick glance.

“Why do you assume I did something?” Laien asked poutingly, though clearly with a cheeky smile on his face.

“Are you telling me you already forgot all those nobles and family leaders who came to complain to me over the past two years?” Rudford asked, raising his eyebrows. “Sure, we had turned them all down because they were being unreasonable… but you’ve got a talent for getting yourself into troublesome situations,” he mentioned and chuckled a little, then glanced at Injar questioningly.

“If you put it that way, then we surely brought you some trouble, Rudford,” Injar said with a laugh and patted Laien on his back, urging him to start explaining.

“Um, long story short I made friends with Sin, the Prince who Injar is protecting, then fought with a guy from the Twin Phoenix School - in the arena, not on the streets! - and gained new insights and made friends with him too, but Anatis has a lot of problems with Einrah so I kinda want to help him and came to ask you if you could lend us a hand…?” Laien summed up rather chaotically, not even knowing what he wanted to tell Rudford about first.

“Do you expect me to make any sense of what you just told me?” Rudford asked helplessly. “I more or less get the gist of the situation, but if you want me to deal with someone as annoyingly stubborn and unreasonable as Einrah, I want to know the whole story,” he stated clearly and gestured Laien and Injar to follow him into his house.

“You are still a child after all, huh?” Injar said quietly and patted Laien’s head, thus getting the twelve-year-old to send him a grumpy stare.

“I don’t mean it as a bad thing,” Injar clarified with a smile, thinking about all the times Sinra behaved in a similar way when talking with him about something exciting that had happened.

As the two bickered a little, Rudford glanced at them over his shoulder. He laughed silently, wondering how did Laien manage to get Injar to look like his friend. Hadn’t the two of them met at most a few hours ago?

But well… he had also taken a liking to this cheeky kid the moment he met him, so he couldn’t really blame Injar for giving in either.

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“Okay, I think I have the picture,” Rudford said after taking another sip of his favorite, sweet red wine. “Are you sure you want to commit yourself to that path?” he directed the question to Laien, for once being completely serious with him.

“I am,” Laien responded almost instantly. For some, it might have appeared that he was being hasty, but he simply didn’t tend to ponder over his decisions for days.

“Then go tell those new friends of yours that I will help them,” Rudford said with a smile. “As for how to deal with Einrah, leave it to me. There are many ways this whole issue with Anatis can be solved,” he assured with a laugh, secretly looking forward to teaching that buffoon a lesson.

“Just like that?” Injar thought so loudly that he ended up saying the words aloud. Yes, Laien might have told Rudford the whole story and asked him to help… but really, how could Rudford have agreed so easily?

“Hm?” Rudford smiled wryly, perhaps having picked up the habit from Laien… or having reverted back to his old days. “My precious disciple has chosen the path he wants to follow, what else but support him could I have done as his master?” he asked as he tousled Laien’s hair, then laughed when Laien hugged him in thanks.

“A disciple, huh,” Injar thought quietly. The image he could see right now seemed more like a father and a son to him rather than simply a master and his disciple, but he chose not to comment on it. “We going back, or do you want to stay longer?” he asked, smirking just a little.

Somewhat reluctant to leave so quickly, Laien glanced at Rudford.

“Go and tell your friends, I need to take care of a few things,” Rudford said caringly, even himself not quite aware of the tone he was using to speak with Laien.

“Fine,” Laien nodded, but before standing up from the sofa he hugged Rudford one more time. “Thanks,” he said happily and after a few more seconds, he got up and left with Injar.

“No time to be sitting here and drinking wine,” Rudford mused as he finished his cup in one go. “Even if Injar can protect this Prince of his, they don’t know what they are getting into. I really need to make some solid preparations,” he thought with a serious expression on his face, already heading to the meeting hall and for the first time, regretting that he hadn’t appointed himself an official messenger.

“Great Master!”

“Great Master,”

Quite a few Elders and Core Disciples were gathered in the meeting hall on the occasion of Grand Gathering. When Rudford entered it, they all rose to their feet and greeted him, some of them bowing, some clasping their hands in respect.

“Until I call it off, the silent hunt is enacted,” Rudford said calmly, his words causing the thirty Elders and twenty Core Disciples to become shocked and at the same time, immensely excited.

“Elder Yuran,” Rudford looked at the youthful-looking man. “Go to the main sect and tell Roderick to make the necessary preparations and come here within seven days,” he ordered simply, knowing that Roderick himself would be aware of what needs to be done.

“Elder Han,” the middle-aged man nearly jumped up when Rudford said his name. He knew coming here after spotting that martial master and Laien flying over was the correct choice! “Go to the western border and find my little brother. Tell Vatras that unless he is unable to, I want him to come to Neil City within seven days.”

“The rest of you,” Rudford swept everyone with a serious gaze. “I want all our martial masters and all disciples to be back as soon as possible. Those who are primarily assigned to the main sect shall return there and guard it, everyone else shall come to Neil City,” he ordered, after what everyone responded in unison.

“Yes, Great Master!”

“Go, there is no time to waste,” Rudford said calmly, instantly getting all the people gathered in the meeting hall to leave and begin spreading the news of the silent hunt being enacted.

“Now that this is taken care of, I need to go and see a few of my old friends,” Rudford mused, then withdrew a simple grey robe from his interspatial ring and headed to the city.

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“Yo,” Laien called out with a smile when he entered the training hall and saw Anatis sitting there cross-legged.

“How did it go?” Anatis asked the first thing after opening his eyes. He could tell that judging by the bright smile on Laien’s face Rudford had agreed, but he wanted to hear it with his own ears.

“All good, elder brother will help us,” Laien confirmed merrily and sat down in front of Anatis. “Sin already knows and they went to tell the girls with Injar, so we can focus on training for now,” he added, feeling very much pleased by the ecstatic expression on Anatis’s face.

“If there’s anything I can do to pay you back, just tell me,” Anatis said eagerly, so happy that he didn’t know how to thank Laien.

“Then, stay as you are for a bit,” Laien said with a mischievous smile and moved closer to Anatis, sitting similarly cross-legged and close enough for their legs to be touching.

As Laien expected, Anatis blushed a little almost instantly, the memory of their last conversation still very much fresh in his mind. He didn’t move away though, feeling obligated to follow up on his own words.

“He sure is amusing to tease,” Laien thought with a wide smile and leaned forward a bit, taking a good look at Anatis’s handsome face. He held back a chuckle when Anatis swallowed nervously, his cheeks reddening even further.

“He has nice eyes, just like Sinra… oh, his eyelashes are blond just like his hair,” Laien mused to himself, feeling a bit jealous of those two. “It’s not that I dislike my eyes or hair, but it’s just…” he pouted silently and without thinking about it too much, reached out to Anatis’s hair and swept through them with his fingers, admiring their beautiful golden color.

“U-um,” Anatis tried to say something, but even he himself wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. One thing was for sure though; he was feeling incredibly hot all the way to his ears and was fairly certain that he was thoroughly flushed red.

“Okay, that’s enough. Thanks,” Laien said wryly and scooted back by about thirty centimeters. He was more than content with the reaction he managed to get out of Anatis, so he left it at that.

“You really love teasing people, don’t you…?” Anatis asked, smiling resignedly. It was really frustrating to be made fun of in this way, but he didn’t entirely dislike it either.

“Only those who I like,” Laien replied lightheartedly, then chuckled since Anatis appeared to be embarrassed even by this simple statement. “Want me to tell you something nice?” he brought up on the spur of the moment, thinking that it would be fine to tell Anatis about it.

“Um, yeah why not,” Anatis responded carefully, a bit on guard against the possibility of the thing mentioned by Laien being silly.

“You know I use ice magic, right?” Laien asked, raising his hand and producing a fist-sized crystal of ice over it. “I can freely revert it back to water…” he began saying and to make a point, turned the shard of ice into a ball of water. “Or, do something like this,” he added with a cheeky smile, causing the water to evaporate into a slowly rotating steam of boiling hot mist.

Sensing the amount of heat contained in the steam Anatis couldn’t help but shiver a little. It was one thing for him to guard against incredibly cold air, which he could directly heat up… but protecting himself from hot mist would be incredibly difficult.

He would likely need to strain himself to cover his whole body with a layer of golden flames, but that would use up ridiculous amounts of Qi. Without getting at least as far as to the seventh level of his Qi Manipulating and Battle Arts, such a feat would be pretty much beyond him.

“You probably thought it’s all magic, right?” Laien asked cheekily. “Actually, I’m pretty sure it can be done by both spiritual and martial practitioners. The way how everything contains inner ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ energies and the way to manipulate them in order to change the properties of the surrounding matter, I call it the Principle of Energy,” he explained briefly, knowing that getting into the details of how he was doing it was pretty much pointless, akin to trying to teach someone how he was moving his hands.

“Thanks to it, I can turn the basic element of water into ice or into a steam of hot mist and have its properties changed and power increased,” he added, this part being somewhat more of a bragging on his part rather than explanation.

“Does your normal water magic cannot be strengthened by this Principle of Energy?” Anatis inquired about what Laien said last as he either way was unable to understand too much about this whole Principle of Energy. He, of course, got the overall idea and acknowledged the information that everything possessed some kind of additional energy inside it, but it didn’t change the fact that despite trying, he was unable to perceive or sense this energy.

“Dunno, maybe if there was something in-between the positive and negative energy?” Laien said and shrugged his shoulders. “I tried to do that, but there is barely any change in power if I apply the leveled-out energy which is neither positive nor negative,” he explained resignedly, truth to be told having long since ‘had a hunch’ that there indeed was something more to the Principle of Energy… but had since been unable to come up with a good way to find this ‘thing’.

“Have you tried mixing them both? You know, those positive and negative energies, just like we did with the Aspects,” Anatis asked randomly, wondering if this thing Laien called ‘Principle’ could have some similarities to the Aspects.

“They are each other’s exact opposites, how could I…” Laien began saying but suddenly snapped out of this line of thinking. If he approached this problem from a slightly different perspective, then everything would make sense and it would be possible to literally mix the positive and negative energies!