Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 130. Spear Arts, Sword Arts.

“This wind…” Laien’s eyebrows furrowed as he watched the change occur around Reian. “This sensation, it’s far less overbearing than when he was leading with the flames, but I’ve got a feeling it will be much harder to deal with than those fire-centered attacks from before,” he mused silently. Reian told them that he couldn’t afford to use this approach in their battle with Yimar Furi’s people, so there likely existed some inherent limitations to this technique of his. For example, it probably wasn’t suitable for dealing with a large number of people or didn’t allow one to counterattack in a direct, head-on manner. However, against the two of them and without the need to protect anyone, this style would surely display its own strengths to the fullest, or so Laien carefully assumed.

“Ready for round two?” Reian asked with a smile. He could see that Laien and Yin didn’t move much from the spots they ended up in after their last exchange, so they were quite close together. He would have immediately tried to use this opportunity if he was still leading with his flames, but since he had already switched to leading with the wind, he could afford to relax a little. Simply enough, as of now the positions of those two in relation to him no longer mattered as much in the grand scope of things, or so to say. In other words, he could afford to be far more flexible.

“Whenever you feel like it,” Laien replied cheekily, though he didn’t relax his guard in the slightest. He didn’t know how exactly Reian’s fighting style would change, so just like Yin, he decided that it was better to wait and see before attempting any more combination attacks. After all, the two of them had already learned well that they weren’t a match for Reian in a one-on-one fight, so rushing in without a concrete plan would be the worst thing they could possibly do in this situation.

“Good,” Reian said with a chuckle, then all of the sudden dashed forward without any clear physical indications that he was going to do so. To Laien and Yin, it looked as if his body was relatively relaxed the whole time and then, without using almost any force at all, it suddenly shot out towards them! Thankfully, their two parties were separated by around thirty meters and the two of them had not only abundant battle experience but also sharp senses and high level of auxiliary insights, so despite being taken off-guard at the first split-second, they still had more than enough time to respond.

“He’s coming at me, huh?” Laien laughed in his heart. Did Reian opt to go after him because he was a more reliable target since he couldn’t retreat almost whenever he pleased like Yin with his Lightning Steps? It was a reasonable decision, but considering how sturdy his defense was, it would be a good opportunity for him to reveal some things about Reian’s wind-oriented style. “I guess there wasn’t a perfect choice here, to begin with,” the thought passed through Laien’s mind as he readied himself to defend. By all means, it looked like Reian was simply swinging his sword at him in a manner very much similar to his original style, but he refused to believe there wasn’t something more to it.

Just like during their first exchange, he used his spear arts to catch and deflect Reian’s attack, but although he indeed managed to pull his sword along at first, he ended up behind heavily surprised by what occurred afterwards. First, he sensed the mass of wind-element Qi stir all of the sudden, just as his and Reian’s weapons collided. He could tell how seven blades of wind were suddenly brought forth by Reian’s Qi, transforming from a gentle gust of wind that followed along Reian’s sword into a deadly and incredibly sharp masses of compressed air. However, as fast and as this supplementary attack of Reian’s was, it wasn’t what caused Laien to be so shocked.

“There’s no force behind his slash?” Laien recognized a step too late to be able to react in any significant way. Just as a few of the seven wind blades managed to find their way past the stream of water and ice that followed his spear and struck at his cheek and around his torso, only to shatter on top of his Ice Body while leaving but a few indistinct scratches on his skin, he focused on the bewildering feeling of Reian’s sword following alongside the course of his spear.

It might have been only for two dozen centimeters or so, but Reian’s sword moved along in a gentle, gust-like manner before suddenly changing its course and pressing onto his spear from an unexpected downwards angle. “A gentle, flexible sword that can instantly change into a forceful one?” Laien was startled by the discovery. He had fought against many enemies since he left the Sarkcente Kingdom, but there had been no one who accomplished something as ridiculous as matching his spear arts in an equally gentle style before changing to the hard approach mid-clash!

With his rhythm shattered, he was unable to make good use of his spear arts and had his guard blow upwards by Reian’s one-handed strike… though it might be more correct to call what Reian did a push instead of a strike. Still, the result was the same. “He’s fast, I don’t have enough time!” Laien recognized instantly. He wouldn’t be able to put his guard back up before Reian’s follow-up attack arrived, nor would he have enough time to gather a sufficient amount of spiritual energy to defend with magic. He would have still had a leeway when Reian was using his straightforward fire-based techniques, but this time, he his back had really been pushed all the against the wall.

“Tch.”

Luckily, he wasn’t facing Reian alone. The very instant he fell into a disadvantage, Yin rushed in and attacked Reian from the side. He once again employed his Elemental Sword of Lightning, Thunder, threatening to take Reian out with a single blow if he dared to ignore him and pulled through with the attack against Laien. And certainly enough, Reian changed his movements and moved to defend, knowing fully well that he couldn’t allow even one of Yin’s full-strength attacks to hit him cleanly.

“Eh?” The next split-second, Yin’s eyes widened as one of his strongest and most efficient martial techniques that boasted great penetrating power and unpredictability was first met, then deflected with the sound of scratching steel by Reian’s sword. And not only that, even the lightning that was embedded in his martial technique had all been suppressed by Reian’s wind, resulting in Reian sustaining no damage at all despite having had little to no time to shift from attacking to defending!

“The same technique isn’t going to work twice,” Reian scolded in his thoughts and without hesitation, made use of the split-second opening that Yin inevitably displayed after his martial technique failed to inflict any damage. Having purposefully defended in a way that would put Yin slightly to his side and not in front of him, as to neutralize the advantage of Yin’s dual wielding, he took a step forward and slashed out, aiming at the area between Yin’s chest and shoulder.

Alarmed, Yin used his Lightning Steps to retreat, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to dodge or defend in any other way. The next instant, he appeared a dozen meters away, though with a worried frown on his face. “There was no delay between his defense and attack, it was all done in the same, extremely fluid motion,” he recognized, the right side of his shirt slowly soaking on the crimson blood that flowed out of the fairly deep cut that ran from his upper chest all the way through his right shoulder. He had dodged with his movement art without hesitation and yet, he still failed to move out of the way fast enough. Truth to be told, it was quite worrying. If he couldn’t match Reian with his speed and Laien couldn’t hold against him with his defense, then what could they do?

That is, what could they do if their original intent of keeping their strongest cards sealed away stood unchanged?

“Just follow along?” Yin laughed inwardly as Laien’s intentions were transmitted over to him. Then, before his inquiring thoughts even fully formed, he understood what the basis of Laien’s confidence was. “Is it my imagination, or is our spiritual bond growing stronger by the second?” he wondered with a smile. He didn’t notice it earlier since he was already used to sharing emotions and surface thoughts with Laien all the time, but now that they were fighting Reian, he was beginning to realize that they could convey far more information to each other than before.

And as if to prove that, this whole exchange between the two of them occurred in an extremely short period of time, one that was merely enough for Reian to collect himself and take one step towards Laien, whom he apparently intended to focus his attention upon. “Fine, let’s see if I can learn a thing or two too,” Yin laughed in his heart and ran forward, planning to once again interfere in the exchange between Laien and Reian if such a need arose. At the same time, however, he definitely wasn’t planning to repeat the failure from a second ago.

“How can they be so composed?” Reian questioned while closing the distance between himself and Laien. He had glanced at Yin’s expression and it was unexpected calm, even expectant and amused, and now that he was looking at Laien, he could see the very same emotions painted on his face. “Wouldn’t one be at least a bit flustered when he lost the initiative in an instant? Or is it that they are just so used to fighting that something like this doesn’t count as a peril?” he wondered half-consciously, but in the end, he could only discard those thoughts as he needed to concentrate on the fight itself. He might have gained an advantage thanks to shifting his style towards the flexible wind-oriented one, but it didn’t mean that he suddenly grew overconfident and would loosen his guard.

Trying to confirm what the plan of those two was, he attacked Laien in a manner much similar to their last exchange. Just like before, his wind blades didn’t have much effect apart from tearing up Laien’s clothes, but more importantly, he once again managed to entangle his own sword into Laien’s flow-like defense. When he felt the time was right, he pushed with his sword against Laien’s spear, intending to blow his guard away just like before, but to his surprise, he met with no resistance as Laien allowed the push to happen freely as he retreated by a few steps, borrowing the force of the attack to open a little bit of distance between the two of them.

“He’s already grasped the timing for that one, huh,” Reian thought and revealed a smile. He shouldn’t have expected the almost identical maneuver to work twice, but there was no harm in trying it once just in case it did. “Well, time to add some variety to my movements,” he decided and chased after Laien, seeing as Yin wasn’t in a hurry to attack him just yet despite having closed most of the distance between the two of them in the past half a second or so.

As such, with Yin staying in the rear, Reian and Laien proceeded to entangle themselves in a prolonged exchange of blows.

On Reian’s side, the quick and deceivingly soft and gentle slashes along with the blades of wind that accompanied them were dished out one after another, without any effort at all. Going by the strength of Reian’s Qi and the vitality of his aura, it looked like those attacks used very negligible amounts of energy. It wouldn’t be strange if he could keep fighting in this manner for a very long time, perhaps even for a few hours. On the other hand, although the mixture of soft and hard swordsmanship he was employing was constantly giving Laien trouble, to Reian’s own surprise, those hardships didn’t result in Laien receiving any direct blows at all. In fact, it seemed like he was the one steadily losing the advantage with each second of the fight passing!

“Is he improving and adapting to my style in real time?” Despite experiencing those changes personally, Reian still had a hard time believing that he was failing to overwhelm Laien. He had spent many long years of his life polishing his swordsmanship, but all the sweat and blood he had put into growing to this level was being skipped by Laien as he absorbed his technique and applied it to his own spear arts in mere moments…! If this wasn’t ridiculous enough, then what was?

Perhaps the fact that a dual practitioner of the eighth rank, still in the mortal realm, was keeping up with him, a peak martial master of the third rank. True, Laien’s energy expenditure was undoubtedly many times higher than his and he wasn’t using any martial techniques, but the mere fact that Laien possessed strength and ability that allowed him to stand his ground and exchange blows with someone whose cultivation was so much higher was freaky!

It was so freaky and ridiculous that it no longer was just awe and humility over Laien’s talent that swelled in Reian’s heart, but also an inexplicable feeling of envy.

Alas, what Reian couldn’t understand was that Laien’s rapid improvements weren’t brought by Laien’s talent alone, but were aided by a mountain-load of harsh training and real-life experience. The pure defensive Water Flow Spear Art which Laien had achieved not that long ago was more than enough for his technique to firmly step into the master-level. Since then, Laien had gone through many new experiences and had built up a solid foundation to take the next step in his spear arts. Finally, he met opponents like Mikaela and now, Reian, whose styles gave him that little push he needed to enter the state of epiphany and allow his spear arts to evolve to the next level.

However, Reian was far too absorbed in his assumptions to consider any other possibility to be a viable one. As a result, he grew agitated and made a silly mistake, throwing far too much strength behind one of his attacks, which was then quickly caught in Laien’s Water Flow defense and deflected, in consequence presenting a huge opening to Laien.

“What am I doing?!” Reian admonished himself, but just as he was about to jump sideways to dodge, the exact moment he began pulling the weight of his body to the side and applying pressure to the ground with his feet, he sensed Yin move over to the exact spot he had been planning to jump towards with his Lightning Steps movement art. The timing of this maneuver was so incredibly nasty that a half-conscious thought whether it wasn’t partially a coincidence passed through his mind.

Unable to fix the movements of his body in time, Reian was forced to use his wind to forcefully change directions. That, however, exposed him to the thrust of Laien’s spear more than he would have liked to and received a fairly deep cut along his left thigh, the skin and muscle around which froze momentarily before he could expel the ice-cold energy that got into the wound. “Damn,” he cursed silently, angry at himself for getting agitated so easily. Getting distracted by his own thoughts and getting wounded as a result? What was he, an adolescent boy who couldn’t keep his head cool? God damn it! It was already the third injury too! It was so annoyingly frustrating!

“Huh?” And to add salt to injury, contrary to what he expected, he saw Laien relax a little and stand his ground while Yin dashed forward to attack him. “Those two… they are using this fight to temper themselves one by one?” The realization hit him like a ton of bricks. He had been the one who intended to use this spar to increase his strength, but all he had been doing was concerning himself with his performance, in the back of his head thinking how it would look like in front of Jasmine and Julien, instead of putting his whole heart to the fight at hand! It was so pathetic he couldn’t help feeling embarrassed with himself!

“Forget it all,” he told himself. “Nothing else matters now. Forget about Jasmine, about Julien, about getting angry… forget about Mustafa and Arslan and only focus on right here and right now,” he mused in a half-conscious manner, all within the split-seconds as Laien and Yin were switching the leading roles. He closed his eyes but for a moment that was equal to three or four blinks to reset his mind, then opened them and held the hilt of his sword firmly. With his expression having suddenly grown a lot calmer and clearer, the only thing that continued to reflect in his eyes were the figures of the two youths he was facing.

“Something’s changed,” Yin realized in an instant, his sharp instincts warning him that he was going to be cut down in the blink of an eye if he dared to attack Reian with the slightest bit of carelessness. However, even though he did tell himself to be careful, there really wasn’t all that much he could change by this point. He slashed with one of his swords and Reian met the attack with his own sword, and with their weapons met, he once again experienced the weird sensation of gentleness in Reian’s swordsmanship. Yet, before he could focus on it properly, he was forced to hurriedly move sideways with his Lightning Steps in order to avoid the wind blades that came at him, following Reian’s strike.

“Too rigid,” Yin complained in his heart, seeing how Reian turned and stepped towards the stop he had moved to very early on. “I’ve gotten faster thanks to mastering a little bit of the Profound Mystery of Lightning Dance, but I’m still far away from reaching a satisfactory level in it,” he thought while moving to defend and possibly counterattack against the incoming slash of Reian’s sword. He really wished he could control his movement art perfectly, but he couldn’t prevent his movements from stilling for a split-second right after stopping every time. Because of that, he was unable to exert the full prowess of Lightning Steps and attack in a nigh-unavoidable manner… but he was confident that as long as he trained for a few more years, he would be able to accomplish that.

“I can’t keep running away,” he decided at the last moment before the second clash of his exchange with Reian. He roused his Qi to the limits and covered his body with a layer of lightning and focused on the sensation of his twin swords. Once more, he met Reian’s slash with his own and once again, he experienced the strange ‘soft’ sensation. He pushed against it, trying to feel it out better, all the while allowing the wind blades to whack at his body and ignoring the pain from the mildly-serious wounds that were being craved all over his arms and chest. The next instant, he felt Reian’s sword not exactly give in, but redirect the strength of the push in a manner much similar to what Laien was usually doing with his spear.

Sensing danger as the blade of Reian’s sword slid against his sword, threatening to move past it and be thrust straight at his throat, he hurriedly used his other sword to force Reian to change his movements. However, his eyes opened wide when Reian took half a step forward and twisted his body, suddenly applying a lot of force to his sword and thoroughly deflecting his second twin sword to the side and at the same time, leaving another batch of wounds on his chest. Thankfully, he managed to hurriedly employ his elemental sword art with the other sword, forcing Reian to retreat a few steps instead of following-up with a fatal attack now that he had broken through his guard.

“I get it!” With as much blood as he was spilling, Yin revealed an overjoyed smile. “It’s not a ‘gentle’ sword nor is it a ‘gentle spear’, it’s simply the approach that uses just around seventy percent of full strength in most times to allow for a greater level of flexibility! Laien is pairing it up with his water-element insights and makes my attacks feel like they are being pulled in so it was hard to tell, but now I think I’ve finally got it!” he thought with a laugh and for a moment, allowed his joy to get the better of him and dashed at Reian, meeting him halfway with a full momentum.

He slashed with one of his twin swords again and met the attack of Reian’s, making sure not to strike with too much strength. To his delight, he could tell that he had a far better grasp of his sword’s movements this time around and as Reian adjusted the force behind his own sword, he was able to do the same and meet him head-on from a position that wasn’t disadvantageous. He smiled happily when he didn’t lose out too much in this first exchange and was only forced backwards by a bit instead of having his defenses thrown into dismay.

Alas, Reian was too strong after all. He had been using up Qi at an alarming rate to offset the wind blades that Reian’s wind carried behind every one of his attacks, but be it earlier or after this one latest exchange of blows, he suffered more and more wounds all over his body. By this point, even though he had been facing Reian head-on only for three or four seconds, he was all bloodied up and the upper part of his clothes was all but torn to shreds. Laien could still face Reian and his overbearing wind-oriented fighting style with relative ease thanks to his ridiculously potent defensive prowess, but anyone else who didn’t boast the same level of defense would never be able to accomplish a similar feat while being that much lower in the cultivation level than Reian himself.

However, instead of retreating, Yin merely laughed inwardly and pressed the attack on, polishing his newly acquired perspective on the sword arts. After five more lightning-quick close-range exchanges, even the look in Reian’s eyes grew a bit concerned. Yet, when he sensed a surge of spiritual energy from Laien’s direction, who had been unnaturally silent this whole time, he roused his fire-element Qi to defend from the magic that was undoubtedly about to be thrown at him.

And just like Reian’s senses were telling him, the four meters high and over ten meters wide wave of water and ice converged out of Laien’s spiritual energy and shot forwards. Unwilling to retreat and potentially show some openings to those two, Reian backed away from Yin and slashed out, sending a mass of concentrated flames and wind to meet one half of Laien’s magic. The next instant, the two forces collided and due to the extreme difference in temperature, exploded in a spectacular fashion, sending rocks and boiling-hot steam flying in all directions.

Prepared to be attacked at the moment’s notice, Reian kept his aura spread and it was then when he noticed something strange. He could swear that for some reason, Yin didn’t dodge out of the way of Laien’s magic and instead allowed it to hit him with full force. Was this a terrible blunder of a kind? He couldn’t believe that, but just like the other three White Guards, he hadn’t had time to watch closely how Laien and Yin fought against Yimar Furi’s people, so he was oblivious to the special effects Laien and Yin’s Blood Pact provided to them in terms of combat.

“Whew.” Around three seconds earlier, the mass of water dissipated and Yin walked out of it with a smile. The skin on his chest and arms was perfectly smooth, without one sign of the nearly three dozens of rather serious cuts which had been there just a moment ago. “I’m ready for round two,” he said with a happy smile on his face and resisted the urge to exchange a glance with Laien, who just approached his side.

“How did it not harm him at all?” Reian almost blurted the question out. He had seen water-element and light-element practitioners at work many times and he had never seen anyone using an attack to heal someone! If it was possible to do, then the value of those two elements on the battlefield would be leaps and bounds higher than it already was now! Was Laien’s control over water just so freakish or were those two actually still hiding more secrets than anyone had given them credit for?

“You ready?” Laien called out wryly. “This time, we’re coming together,” he said with a smirk and without waiting for Reian to respond, kicked the ground and charged towards him.