Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 197. The War’s Over.

“Emeric!” Abdain spat the name out as if it was the worst of curses, all along with a mouthful of blood the arrow had forced out of him. They had been so close to capturing Arslan and getting the last laugh, but the damned ruler of the Yali Kingdom just had to appear not a second too late! “Damn it, not yet!” Abdain roared in his heart and while fully committing himself to giving up his life, he stomped at the ground and once again charged over to Arslan. Only a few dozen meters separated him from the kid and at his current state of strength, such a distance could be crossed within a blink of an eye or perhaps less! As for the injuries he was sustaining due to not taking time to thoroughly suppress the wind and lightning rampaging in his body, he couldn’t care less.

He knew that the moment he had taken both the Divine Pill and the Divine Medicine at once, his future as a powerful cultivator was over. If he were lucky, he might have been able to retain cultivation base at the fifth Realm of Heroes once the effects of the pill and the medicine wore down, but now it no longer looked as if he would live long enough for any of that to matter anyway. However, he didn’t regret his actions and choices. His life had been gifted back to him by Maar all those years ago and he had been following the man dutifully ever since. If a situation demanded it, he wouldn’t hesitate to die for his benefactor… and it was exactly such a place and time.

Although, it was neither that he had no regrets whatsoever. He had often wished that Yimar Maar would take his opinions and his advice… perhaps not more seriously, but more to heart. He had never been a thoughtless sword in the hands of his master, but he had never forgotten his place as a servant either. Perhaps, had he done more to influence Yimar Maar’s decisions, then this day would have never happened… but that, too, was only a bunch of random thoughts that passed through Abdain’s mind in his last moments.

“Impertinent fool,” on top of the cliff, Emeric murmured as a second silvery-metallic arrow appeared in his hand, already nocked against the bowstring. To be fair, he wouldn’t be able to so soon release another arrow as powerful as the first one, but so what? He might have been worried had Abdain been rushing towards Anna or Casimir, but was Abdain perhaps under some delusion that he would gain an upper hand by capturing Arslan? Perhaps had it been a regular war, such an act might have mattered somewhat. However, he was only here because Anna and Casimir chose to involve themselves in the conflict between Arkarians, with a spice of the Ruishi Federation on top, out of their own volition. Whether Abdain captured Arslan and whether the kid got injured or killed as a result, Makarash wouldn’t be able to complain much, especially now that Mustafa was rumored to have been crippled. And to begin with, unlike that hard on the outside but soft on the inside fool Azuresky, he never considered allying with any Ikarians to be a viable option.

“That being said,” Emeric mused as his aim shifted from Abdain to Yimar Maar, causing a powerful shiver to immediately run down the man’s spine. “Having a natural wind-element Qi does make quite some difference, this bastard,” he thought, the left corner of his lips rising slightly while a strongly competitive light shone in his eyes. Then, just as his thought finished passing through his mind, Azuresky charged right past him on top of his powerful Tempest Horse. Both the man and the horse were fully engulfed in a tempest of azure-gold wind, the Qi forming both a protective layer of armor and two pairs of huge wings. While the ones on Azuresky’s back appeared slightly more angelic, the ones stretching from the Tempest Horse were more beast-like, gryphon-like.

The moment Azuresky passed through the edge of the cliff, the two pairs of wings flapped just once and brought forth a small-scale storm in the nearby area as Azuresky accelerated rapidly towards the battlefield. Had Emeric not been expecting his old friend and rival to act as recklessly as always and had he not defended himself with a layer of wind, his stance would have been broken and he wouldn’t have been able to release another arrow for over half a second. With how this brief series of events played out, though, the unlikely cooperation between the two Kings succeeded. Although, it might be better to say that the two succeeded in not getting in each other’s way, instead.

“Stealing the glory again,” Emeric grumbled a bit discontentedly, then released the second arrow. “It’s not as powerful as the first one, so it probably won’t be enough to kill him in one shot,” he mused and sighed inwardly. He wasn’t a young lad anymore though, so he couldn’t afford to let his desire to compete with Azuresky to overcome his sense of reason. In this situation, it was better for him to attack a bit sooner and force Yimar Maar to defend than to gather more power to kill him half a second later. Regrettably, this would make it so in people’s eyes Azuresky would have claimed the biggest accomplishment yet again, alas! No matter what he chose to do, he wouldn’t be satisfied with the outcome, so he thought that he might as well do the thing he considered to be right.

And, if the flash of light in Reian’s eyes the moment Emeric released the second arrow was to be any kind of an indication, this choice of Emeric’s appeared to be just the right one. Reian, using the fact that Yimar Maar had no other choice but to give his all just to stay alive in the face of Emeric’s arrow, instantly chose to forget about him. He could have easily killed him if he waited for the opening to present itself fully, but Yimar Maar’s life or death wasn’t important at this moment. The battle was as well as over, but the one thing he couldn’t allow to happen was for Abdain to kill Arslan in the last act of desperation before his death. There would be a trade-off danger of Yimar Maar choosing to target Laien and Yin in this short window of time, but as unlikely as such action on Yimar Maar’s part was to succeed, if he had to choose, then he would protect Arslan over those two boys.

“Azuresky…!” At the same time as this final clash was developing, Abdain cursed in his heart. Had it not been for Azuresky appearing right after Emeric and charging straight at him, he would have had at least enough time to kill or maybe capture Arslan. Yet, Azuresky was both too powerful and too fast, not to mention that he had built up huge momentum while charging on his Tempest Horse. He would have to use all of his strength if he wanted to withstand a blow from Azuresky’s glaive, but even if he did, then so what? It wasn’t like he felt confident in overpowering Azuresky while the effects of the Blood Boil were still in effect and to be honest, even if those effects were ten times longer and ten times less harmful, he still wouldn’t have had high hopes. As far as he could tell, with Azuresky’s half a step into eight Realm of Heroes cultivation base and his natural earth and wind affinities, it would take no less than a legendary expert in the ninth Realm of Heroes to kill him.

“Since it’s like that,” the thought flashed through Abdain’s mind. “Then I might as well go out with a bang,” he decided and for one last time, he exerted his body far beyond its limits. He roused all his Qi at once; all of the boiling, overflowing Qi that was infused with his very vitality. This inevitably caused the Qi Paths in his body to first stretch dangerously, then very quickly start snapping, cracking, and breaking down. However, thanks to this reckless act, just for one instant Abdain gained access to far more than one hundred percent of his strength. He couldn’t allow Azuresky to kill him in one blow so he had to defend himself properly if he wanted to kill Arslan. Additionally, he wasn’t going to get killed by Reian either! He might have given up on seeing the next sunrise, but he hadn’t lost his mind. There was no way he wouldn’t notice that bundle of killing intent rushing towards his back or fail to sense the familiar, abruptly condensing mass of wind-element Qi of Reian’s.

Thus, once he coated both the outside and inside of his body with a surging mass of earth-element Qi, he swung his broadsword to meet Azuresky’s glaive. No matter what, between Azuresky’s attack and Reian’s attack, it was the former one that threatened to directly slaughter him with one blow if left unattended. Comparatively, he felt that in his current state he could still manage to fend off Reian with a few layers of defensive techniques. He would have admittedly had better chances of coming out of the exchange unharmed if he were to focus only on defending from those two men, but he understood the futileness of an extended struggle. So, all the while moving to protect himself, he spent a portion of his focus on pouring a large surge of Qi from his right leg into the ground.

In the next instant, his broadsword and Azuresky’s glaive clashed, the mere force of the blow causing the air to implode upon itself and subsequently release a powerful shockwave. Under the assault of the momentum Azuresky had piled up on top of his original strength, Abdain felt his hands shaking. Had he not chosen to perform an unusual two-handed slash, his broadsword would have undoubtedly been flung out of his hands! Still, even when he had just barely blocked the first attack, he felt the flesh and bones in his arms break and crack under the combined pressure of his own Qi and of Azuresky’s assault. To top it off, while Azuresky’s Glaive appeared unharmed in any way, his own broadsword cracked across its length, threatening to break at any moment.

In truth, this one slash of Azuresky’s had proved to be far more powerful than Abdain anticipated. Because of that, it was only when Reian’s thrust arrived at his lower back, just at the level of his Qi Origin, when he could afford to spare any attention to it. If anything, Abdain had to admit that Reian had a frightening level of cultivation potential and similarly, a monstrous talent for battle. Reian’s astonishing growth during their few days of battle was one thing, but his ability to spot and make use of openings was on its own level. Even now, despite the chaos of the situation, Reian had managed to time his attack perfectly, forcing him into the worst spot possible.

Without really thinking about anything anymore, Abdain smirked and allowed Reian’s wind-aided thrust to first assault, then pierce his back and then, his Qi Origin. He felt blood rushing up his throat as the rampaging Qi or Reian’s blew a huge, gory hole in the middle of his stomach, but he felt like laughing nonetheless. Reian’s attack shouldn’t have had been so effective and even Reian knew it, judging by the infuriated and suspicious look in the golden-haired man’s eyes. Yet, Abdain wasn’t planning to be slowly cornered by Azuresky and Reian just to die a pointless death. So, he released his hold on the defensive martial techniques in his body just before Reian’s blow landed and in place of that, he focused all of his will on guiding one last powerful martial technique towards Arslan.

It mattered not that his Qi Origin had been blown to smithereens. He had shaped and released the martial art in time, so severing the connection between it and him would do nothing. “Hah.” He couldn’t help but laugh in his heart. It really was true that once one was dying, the time would seem to flow much more slowly, eh? That being said, he was actually glad that the one who delivered the last blow to him was Reian and not Azuresky. He had killed the young man’s teacher, so it was only fair that the killing blow went to him in repayment. Of course, however, he was most happy about the fact that he was going to leave a bitter-sweet taste in Reian’s mouth. He had avenged his teacher’s, Jasmine the Reaper’s , death, but had failed to protect the young master he served!

“As I said.” Alas, just when Abdain was celebrating his seemingly inevitable little success, an almost ethereal voice resounded in the area. The next split-second, accompanied by a flash of lightning and a gust of wind, Emeric arrived in front of Kasha, who was holding Arslan in her arms, trying to protect him with her own body even at the price of death. The golden-haired King snorted and after raising his foot ever so slightly, he stomped down and released a surge of destructive lightning and raging wind in a circle, all around himself, Kasha, and Arslan. The newly released Qi of Emeric’s then clashed with the dozens of emerging spikes of earth and shattered them before sinking into the ground and contesting against the remaining Qi of Abdain’s, and destroying it after half a second of struggle.

“Impertinent fool,” Emeric added while looking at Abdain with contempt. He should have died like a true warrior instead of going after the weak, but what did he expect from one of the godforsaken Ikarians? Until his last moments, Abdain had been delusional enough to believe that he had a chance of killing Arslan with him and Azuresky present on the battlefield. Hell, had Azuresky not been so conceited trusting him with the duty of defense, Azuresky could have shattered that silly martial technique on his own. Yet, he couldn’t have been bothered to try too hard! This was one of the things he had always hated about Azuresky, but alas, he had more or less gotten used to it by now.

As for Abdain, some disappointment lingered in his eyes for a little bit, but in the end, he smiled just as Reian slashed with his sword and cut his head off. Ironically enough, Abdain died with no regrets in his heart. He had committed countless evils under Yimar Maar’s orders in his life and he had never thought of betraying his benefactor to the very end, yet fate had somehow granted him a peaceful death. If Reian knew of Abdain’s state of mind as he was dying, he would have been infuriated, but life sometimes was like that. No good deed would go unpunished while the blatant evildoers would be allowed to run rampant all the way until their own happily-ever-after in the afterworld.

Once Abdain fell, Emeric sneered for the second time. His and Azuresky’s Royal Guards appeared at the cliff at this exact instant and the two hundred of them would be more than enough to wipe out the remaining, scattered forced under Yimar Maar. As for the man in question, who had started fleeing at top speed once he had somehow fended his arrow at the price of heavy wounds, it would be good training for their men to chase him down and kill him without any casualties. He could, of course, kill Yimar Maar with one fully-charged arrow if he so wished, but he felt no need to do that.

In fact, neither he nor Azuresky felt the need to involve themselves with the battle or to even give out orders any longer. Once they had heard of what was going on from Alexander, Azuresky’s second son, they had taken only their Royal Guards and rushed over here at full speed. Naturally, those battle-hardened elites had no need to be told the obvious. Once they saw that he and Azuresky weren’t giving chase, they all understood what to do and moved to massacre the remaining enemies and to hunt down the fleeing enemy general - Yimar Maar. To top it off, roughly a dozen of them had left the chase instantly and after looking around and when appropriate, confirming the situation with a quick sweep of aura, they moved to heal the most wounded of the present allies. As for those dying and half-dead Ikarians, they were bound to be finished off by their companions. Under the policy of their Kings, they weren’t about to engage in the bothersome act of taking prisoners of war.

That being said, even though Casimir, Anna, and many others breathed an initial sigh of relief now that their fathers’ Royal Guards were mowing down the remaining enemies, none of them relaxed entirely. Instead, once the pressure was taken off them, Casimir and Anna quickly charged over to the spot where Yin was kneeling at Laien’s side. Similarly, those of Casimir’s and Anna’s own Royal Guards who had no wounded companions in need of care hurried over, too. In fact, be it Reian or Julien, or even Arslan, who had regained his cool before Kasha could and moved before her, all hastened their steps to Laien and Yin’s side. The two boys had only been able to stop Abdain for a second or so, but it was undeniable that their side avoided a pyrrhic victory only thanks to their efforts. Be it how those two had shifted the flow of battle early on with their mighty combined attack, pushed and restrained Yimar Maar’s experts during the battle itself, or how they made their last stand at the end, any of those accomplishments was great in its own right. If those achievements were to be added up, however, then it could only be said that the greatest contribution of this battle belonged to none other than those two boys who could barely be called teenagers.

Given their performance, how could anyone not worry about Laien’s life after he had almost been cleaved in half by Abdain? Most of those who came over were so mentally exhausted that barely any of them took notice of the ridiculous fact that Yin had been using water-element energy to provide basic level support to Laien’s mangled body. They were all impatiently waiting for that expert who seemed to belong to Azuresky’s Royal Guard, judging by the insignia of an eagle, to start healing Laien so that they could all finally leave the last of their worries behind. So, when they saw Yin suddenly slap away the incoming stream of water with his lightning-coated hand, they were all flabbergasted. Out of the dozen-plus people present, only Casimir and Julien noticed that the worried look in Yin’s eyes had suddenly changed into a shocked, then pleased one just as the water was making its way to Laien’s body. As the two calmest of those present, they quickly realized that Yin wouldn’t have acted in such a way for no reason and guessed that something was going on.

“Just wait,” Yin said, his tone neither apologetic nor condescending. Caring little about the somewhat ticked-off look in the eyes of the man who had just attempted to heal Laien, Yin smiled and slowly withdrew his water-element Phantasmal Essence. For a few seconds, which seemed much longer to the unknowing onlookers, nothing much happened and Laien’s huge wound remained the same, slowly seeping blood from all the places where flesh was exposed to air. Sensing the tension in the air, Yin couldn’t help but smile as he went out of his way to give a reassuring glance to Arslan. Unless one had a connection similar to Spiritual Link with Laien, it would be nigh-impossible for them to tell that Laien’s dwindling life force was stabilized by the minuscule drops of colorless liquid which were starting to seep out of Laien’s Qi Origin. And, even if someone did somehow notice this much, it would still be very hard for him to tell that what was starting to happen was no mere self-healing, but cleansing and purifying of the body bordering on bodily rebirth. Interrupting this process by prematurely healing Laien’s wounds would be like robbing him of his hard-obtained lucky chance.

After all, Yin knew just as well as Laien that after their experience in the mountains of the Forbidden Lands, there were no impurities left in either of their bodies. Moreover, their physiques and even their martial talents had been permanently strengthened by a level, a feat that no mere ‘Divine Medicine’ could accomplish. When the fact that the two of them cultivated the Nine Refinements of Mortality was included, it became painfully obvious how unrealistic it was for them to find any additional means to improve the innate condition of their bodies. However, Laien’s body appeared to have broken through the limits of a human and began reforging itself little by little, all thanks to the pressure the grave wounds exerted on his vitality and thanks to the presence of the yet unabsorbed drops of mysterious liquid, which acted as a fuel necessary to grasp this rare opportunity.

As for why such a thing was even possible… Yin had an inkling that it had something to do with their Spiritual Bond evolving into a Spiritual Link, which in turn brought their souls far closer together. The two of them had already confirmed in practice that it was possible for them to share not something as simple as a spiritual energy, but the soul essence itself. So, it wasn’t that much of a stretch of the imagination for Yin to guess that their life force had been connected on some level too, although it was likely such a faint connection that he still couldn’t perceive it even when actively looking for it. Still, without something like that existing, Yin found it pretty much impossible for Laien’s body to push into the realm of magical beast physiques even with the stress added by the lethal injury and the benefits provided by the mysterious liquid.

After all, had it been so simple to improve a human’s body, then this method, while undoubtedly costly and risky, would be commonly known in the higher circles of the Forbidden Lands. Yet, Yin had heard nothing of such a thing being possible. On the other hand, while what he had heard and read of Spiritual Link was hazy at best, one book in his grandfather’s collection implied that once a Spiritual Bond evolved into a Spiritual Link, it would provide immense benefits to both of the contracted partners. The book didn’t specify what those benefits would be - as the author himself either wasn’t willing to reveal this much or simply, didn’t know anything else himself - but if they included such an unrealistic concept as sharing soul essence in an entirely harmless way, then who said there were no further miraculous effects to it? It ought to be remembered that just the Blood Pact itself provided for a heaven-defying effect of making the energy of the contracted partners entirely compatible, leaving it up to their will if they wished to affect each other with it or not!

“…!” While Yin was pondering the effects of the Blood Pact and the closely-related Spiritual Link, Laien’s aura finally started first stabilizing in a more noticeable way, then started surging. The one who had noticed it first was none other than the water-element Royal Guard who was standing beside Laien and keeping a close look on him with his aura, all the while carrying a displeased expression on his face. As someone sensitive to not just strength, but also the quality of a person’s aura and in turn, of their innate life force, the man’s eyes popped wide open when the realization dawned upon him. Laien’s wounds began merging on their own at a slow but steady rate, but what was the key and the most amazing point was that the quality of Laien’s life force seemed to be going up!

It wasn’t just the concept of recovering one’s strength, it was actually improving upon its innate quality! When the Royal Guard remembered that he had been frowning upon Yin for the past moment for stopping his attempt at healing, his face flushed slightly. He had actually been about to deprive a talented kid of such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! He truly felt like slapping himself a few times, but as he continued to look, his startled look slowly turned into a confused one. The strength and quality of the boy’s life force were going up, but from what he knew about such rare opportunities, it should have been paired up with impurities being expelled out of the kid’s pores. Yet, all that was happening was his skin heating up and turning into a healthy-reddish shade.

Could it be that… the boy’s body had no further impurities to expel? But if so, then where in the world was this surging life force going to bring the kid towards? Once the Royal Guard asked himself this question, his body shuddered involuntarily. He had been skeptical of the Crown Prince’s decision to risk his and Anna’s lives to help some two kids from the south, but his preconception was shaken. To top it off, the more he looked at the way Casimir, Anna, and everyone else around was behaving, the more shaken he became. Had it not been just a day since their Royal Children met those boys? How come he saw genuine concern and great expectations in their eyes as they gazed upon the kids?