Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 219. Underestimation, Overconfidence.

“Teacher,” the slightly taller of the students spoke after straightening up. “We won’t disappoint you. We will use all of our strength and win back what’s rightfully ours!” he stated with confidence. He was, in fact, so eager to display his abilities that he unwittingly roused his Qi and spiritual energy, displaying his dual water-element cultivation at the peak of the ninth mortal realm.

“Just you wait,” he added in a calmer tone, albeit with no less pride than before. “You will regret asking the Kings for Heaven’s Order Seats instead of some other favour,” he said with a smile, finally taking a moment to properly eye Laien from head to toe. Having won the first place in Sebastian’s stick-drawing lottery, he had purposefully chosen to face Laien. As a fellow water-element dual practitioner, he intended to show him the difference between a fool who stumbled upon some ridiculous luck and someone who had worked hard his entire life to obtain true strength!

“We’ll see about that,” Laien responded with a chuckle, tilting his head as he did so. Needless to say, his attitude instantly rubbed the two vice-heads and the two students the wrong way. “If you want to have an even one-in-a-million chance of winning, I’d suggest you don’t go against me,” he said casually, causing the atmosphere to come close to a boiling point.

Had it not been for the presence of his teachers and instructors, the student who had just spoken would have attacked straight away. He would have accepted the punishment such an attack entailed and would have beaten Laien up, even if only to teach him that being so blatantly arrogant was beyond foolish.

“John, keep calm,” the slightly shorter student reprimanded his friend, seeing how his right hand was twitching dangerously, grasping at the air as if trying to grab hold of his sword. “He’s trying to unnerve you. If you get angry because of your opponent’s words, you’ll fall into a disadvantage before the fight even begins,” he explained, his eyes burning with a calm sense of determination. Unlike John, he cared little for the reasons Laien and Yin were here. To him, all that mattered was martial prowess. If Yin could beat him, he would accept that Yin deserved to occupy Heaven’s Seat, and if Yin couldn’t, he would advance into Heaven’s Quarters using this opportunity. As simple as that.

“Sensible words.” Surprising Laien quite a bit, Yin joined the conversation, looking at the more cool-headed of the two students. “I’m sure you heard of our names, but I’ll give mine anyway. I’m Yin, and I’m looking forward to our duel,” he said in a friendly manner, clasped his hands together and gave his opponent a slight bow of respect. If he were to describe that youth, who seemed to be a year or two older than him, according to Laien’s standards, then he would call him reasonable and likeable.

“I’m Ivan,” the youth replied, returning the clasp of hands and a slight bow to Yin. Ignoring the disapproving looks his two teachers were giving him and paying no attention the perplexed look on John’s face, he added while rousing his earth-element and wind-element Qi, “Just like Crown Prince Casimir, I’m a natural dual-element practitioner of wind and earth. Although I’m far inferior to the Crown Prince, as fellow martial practitioners of the ninth rank, I hope we’ll have a good fight.”

“Likewise,” Yin said contentedly, rousing some of his Qi and making both his cultivation half a step into the Realm of Heroes and his lightning-element affinity apparent at first glance. He was glad that the first impression he had gotten from Ivan wasn’t wrong; particularly because he wasn’t as confident as Laien in enraging other people. If he had to anger his opponent into cultivating harder, he really wouldn’t know where to begin without making himself feel awkward. Thankfully, it looked like he would be able to take it easy and act leisurely, at least for today’s duel.

“Ahem.” When the silence after the exchange between Yin and Ivan started getting uncomfortable, Sebastian coughed, drawing everyone’s attention to himself. “How about we move on? I believe you wished to fight in one of your own training grounds in a neutral setting. Did that not change?” he inquired and received a nod from Laien and Yin. “That’s good. Let’s get moving then. We can talk the details out once we’re there,” he added, wanting everyone, with John in particular, to take those few minutes to cool their heads a little. To be entirely fair, although he had intended for Laien and Yin’s image to become somewhat unfavourable in those students’ eyes, he hadn’t expected the rumours to get so out of control. Yet he trusted that even if Laien were to lose his temper and beat his opponents into a bloody pulp, the spirits of his students wouldn’t break so easily.

“Anyhow,” Sebastian mused, gesturing Laien and Yin to lead the way. “No matter the result, our Academy City will benefit. It’s good if our students fight hard, and it’s also good if those too prone to getting on their high horse get their pride trimmed down by a level. I doubt Laien will care that the rumours about them got a little out of hand, either, given his personality. He’s more likely to feel amused than angered,” he thought as they walked. The only thing he was still a bit concerned about were Alex’s intentions; even though he trusted Alex fully, if Alex made a mess with a far-fetched goal in mind, it would be him who would have to bear with it and diligently clean the shit up.

Yet, as he snuck a glance at this student of his, the honest and innocent smile Alex sent him in response sent a chill down his spine. “Don’t think about it,” he told himself, unaware that his smile was crumbling. He hadn’t known it early on in his master-disciple relationship with Alex, but he had learned it the hard way as time went on. The cuter and more innocent Alex acted in front of him, the bigger the mess he was about to stir up. He had been deceived by this honest expression of Alex’s so many times it had started showing up in his nightmares. Alas, now that he knew, he was long past the point of no return and couldn’t do anything to stop his disciple.

That being said, before Sebastian noticed, the walk to the sparring grounds underneath Laien and Yin’s mansion ended, and they arrived at the place. Regrettably, the atmosphere within their group didn’t become better as he had hoped it to, instead turning even tenser. With Yin and Ivan paying no mind to the prevailing mood and with Laien appearing to be thoroughly amused, John and the two Department Vice-Heads grew angrier by the second. Admittedly, however, it was mostly the relaxed and carefree attitude that Laien blatantly put on a display that got on those three’s nerves.

“Right,” Laien said after sealing the entrance to the rocky training ground they had entered. “Rector, do you have a tool to measure time with you? After we start, we’d like it if you called out at the two-minute mark and the four-minute mark. Could you help us out with it?” he requested, then snorted when he noticed the expressions the two vice-heads were looking at him with. Since he was in a good mood and had a good opinion of Sebastian, he had been fairly polite when speaking to him, but those two men were ticked off even by that. In this sense, the south of the continent was much more to his liking, with people not minding the formalities and treating their lives far more carefreely.

“An hourglass?” Sebastian asked in reply. “I’ve got one in my office. I’ve got a clock there too, but I don’t carry anything like that on me,” he said apologetically. As far as his habits went, he still preferred to tell the hour by the position of the sun, moon, and stars. It wasn’t like he had many time-sensitive duties to attend, either, so nothing forced him to change his ways.

“I’ve got one,” Spiritual Department Head said with a smile. “If you don’t mind, I’ll measure the time for you guys,” he offered, taking out a small hourglass. “This one measures exactly two minutes, so it should be perfect. If you need any other time measurements, I’ve got different sizes and kinds of them, too,” he elaborated contentedly. Unlike Sebastian, he had classes, lectures, and training sessions to attend to, so he had long since gotten used to carrying a small clock. He was even thinking of buying one of the wristwatches that were becoming popular in the north of the continent, but that would have to wait until the subjugation of the northern tribes was done.

“It’ll be great,” Laien confirmed and gave the department head a slight bow in thanks. Then, he turned his attention to his opponent, John, and said, “Say, before we begin, I’ve got something to ask you. Why do you want to become stronger? What’s your goal in life?” he asked casually. Yet, what for him was going along with the flow of his own emotions, turned out to be incomprehensible for John and the two vice-heads. Considering the attitude he had displayed so far, how could he be trying to have a normal conversation now, out of the blue? The three thought along such lines.

“And why should I tell you that?” John responded with a snort. “It’s my own business why I cultivate. It’s got nothing to do with you,” he added after a second of thought. Although the two Department Heads weren’t their direct teachers, only playing the role of their instructors, he didn’t want to appear too boorish in their eyes. Although he was more passionate about stuff than people like Ivan, he wasn’t oblivious to the point of not noticing his surroundings. Especially once he had calmed down a little, he took note of how the two Department Heads and even the Rector acted.

Unlike the two vice-heads, those three were keeping their calm. The Rector and Spiritual Department Head were very amiable when interacting with Laien, too. With so many hints offered to him on a silver plate, he would have been a fool had he kept up his self-righteous behaviour from before. Nonetheless, the fact that he thought Laien and Yin were frauds didn’t change. After all, given their background as companions of Grand Yimar Mustafa’s son and supposedly friends of some important kids of the Ruishi Federation, no other explanation made sense. The Kings would have never bent Academy City’s rules for any other reason than to teach those two a lesson.

“True enough.” Much to everyone but Yin’s surprise, Laien conceded with a shrug of his shoulders instead of questioning John further. “No answer is an answer of its own,” he said quietly and smirked a little, only to chuckle when he saw John’s expression turn ugly once again.

“What about you?” Yin asked, moving his gaze to Ivan. Since the overall idea for them was to help motivate the Earth Quarters students, learning about their motivations would be the quickest and easiest way to open more possibilities. They didn’t intend to spend an entire day or longer to get to know each and every one of those students, so a direct line of questioning like that was the best.

“Nothing grandiose,” Ivan replied in a cool-headed manner. “I want to protect my family and my country. To do that, I need to be strong enough. That’s it,” he explained briefly and gave Yin a slight smile. He was rather proud to have long since figured out what was most important to him, unlike many of his classmates who had childish goals despite being fifteen or sixteen years old.

“A good goal to pursue,” Yin said with a nod. The more he learned about Ivan, the more likeable that youth became. However, to him, Ivan’s outlook on life appeared a bit too simple. “Let me ask you, though. If in the future, you disagree with the actions of your Kings, if you find that their goals and ambitions entail danger to your family and your countries, what will you do?” he inquired without beating around the bush, thus stunning Ivan, and not only him. The two vice-heads were frowning heavily at the gravity of the question he brought up, John was looking at him with open hostility, and even the two Department Heads and Sebastian appeared perturbed. Only Laien and Alex wore knowing, somewhat amused smiles on their faces as they looked forward to Ivan’s answer.

“I don’t know,” Ivan said a few seconds later, having given the matter some thought. “It depends on the circumstances. If they asked me to sacrifice my family for the country, I would refuse. However, if I had to sacrifice myself for the country, I would do it,” he stated, his gaze turning decisive. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about the future ‘what ifs’; for example, what if he died? What If he was given an order to join a dangerous battle? What if he really didn’t want to die? All of those what-ifs were scary to think about, but they motivated him to try harder on a daily basis. As long as he could grow powerful and accumulate accomplishments, he wouldn’t have to worry about those things.

“Hmm.” Yin nodded, not planning to dig into the matter any further. He had recently come to understand much more about the world and its people, so his perspective had become far broader. In that sense, while Ivan’s answer was rather firm, he could now see that it was still very naïve. After all, especially those people who would wield great power and influence in the future were bound to face many dilemmas in their lives, many of them of the moral nature. Some of those people would choose to submit to the rules, others would try to rise within the system so that most of the rules would no longer apply to them. Yet others would fight for their beliefs, just like Laien always did.

“Rector,” Laien said with a playful smile. “Are there any unusual rules we have to adhere to? Or do we go with the standard rules?” he asked just to be sure. It would be a terrible joke if he later learned that Academy City had some rules Sebastian had forgotten to mention. Hypothetically speaking, something silly like not attacking the head just to make the duels safer or forcing everyone to use weapons and equipment of the same quality to ensure the absolute fairness of the fights.

“The standard ones, naturally.” Sebastian nodded. “The duel ends if one of you loses the ability to fight or shouts ‘I surrender!’. Other than that, anything is allowed,” he elaborated in a few words. As for the obvious matters like not killing your opponent if he clearly couldn’t fight anymore and holding back if the difference in strength was too huge, he didn’t think they needed to be mentioned. Be it Laien and Yin or John and Ivan, any of them had surely experienced enough duels to know this much.

“That said,” Sebastian mused, his gaze becoming a bit more serious. “I can’t wait to see the skill of those two with my own eyes. Hearing the story second-hand from Azuresky or even first-hand when I went to talk with Casimir and Anna just isn’t the same. The ability that allowed the two of you to kill dozens of martial masters of the fifth rank and hold your own against a martial master of the seventh rank, show it all to me!” he thought excitedly. Still, at the same time, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to see much until the time for the duels with the monster-class talents came in a month.

Be that as it may, while Earth Quarter’s students of their Academy City were excellent, they weren’t at a point where they could jump five ranks, including a major realm, to fight and kill their enemies. With some luck, four in ten of them would grow well enough to be called supreme martial masters of their ranks. However, until then, they were clearly too weak to stand up to the true monsters.

“Don’t worry,” the Spiritual Department Head said once Laien turned to look at him. “I’ll take care of starting the duel and measuring time,” he affirmed, raising up the small hourglass in his hand. He had a guess or two as to what those two two-minute benchmarks were, and he was looking forward to seeing if either of his predictions would turn out to be true. Of course, apart from that, he was also anticipating the display of abilities by Laien and Yin, being one of those in Sebastian’s inner circle.

“Thanks,” Laien said contentedly, then glanced at Sebastian once more. “Do we have to fight one by one? It’s a waste of time,” he complained with a sigh. He had caught on when Spiritual Department Head mentioned starting the ‘duel’ and not ‘duels’, but realistically speaking, there was no need to split their fights in time. It would have been different if there was a realistic chance of anyone dying if there wasn’t a healer to immediately attend to them, but there was no such thing. They could, naturally, try to keep up the pretences, but that too seemed rather pointless at this point.

“Do as you like,” Sebastian gave in within a heartbeat. As a result, he brought a smile to Laien’s face and a frown to the faces of the vice-heads. However, since he was the Rector and he had given the explicit permission, the vice-heads swallowed their words of complaint. “Should I call him simple or easygoing? Make him feel comfortable and allow him to have control of the situation if he wishes, and he becomes friendly towards you. If he one day meets someone with evil intentions who also knows how to act well, he’s going to suffer,” he mused, feeling a bit worried. On the one hand, he was concerned for Laien’s future, while on the other he wished that Alex wouldn’t go overboard in making use of Laien and Yin. He would rather remain on friendly terms with those two boys than to have Alex exploit them in some political or military scheme for the greater good, after all.

“…!” The next second, Sebastian’s blood pressure spiked as a strand of powerful, murderous intent assaulted his senses. Catching a glimpse of the cold look in Yin’s eyes as the boy turned his head, walking away to prepare for the duel, Sebastian had to do his best to prevent his body from flinching instinctively. Only after a few seconds did he manage to relax, but as soon as he did, he couldn’t help but swallow heavily as a horrifying idea enfolded in his mind. The timing of that precisely directed killing intent from Yin couldn’t have been accidental. It must have been a warning!

Yet if it truly was so, then it also meant that this quiet, calm and collected boy somehow realized what he had been thinking about. Yin had realized that he had been speculating the ways Alex, and thus himself too as Alex’s teacher, could harm the two of them using Laien’s gullibility. He had no idea how Yin could have sensed his thoughts turning that way; he wasn’t sure if he had betrayed some evil intent in his aura fluctuations or something similar. However, regardless of that, the scale of danger and benefit he had attributed to Laien and Yin instantly went up by a lot.

“Alex…” Sebastian exchanged a glance with Alexander, but from the look in the fourteen-year-old’s eyes, he could tell that he hadn’t sensed the strand of killing intent. Alex had noticed that he had suddenly grown tense, but either he was hiding it, or he indeed didn’t know what happened. “The same goes for those four. Only I sensed that surge of murderous aura. I’ll have to find a chance to warn Alex before he has his talk with those two or it might turn into a catastrophe!” he thought urgently, beads of cold sweat beginning to appear on his forehead and on the nape of his neck.

“What is it?” the Spiritual Department Head asked, having noticed that Sebastian’s face grew pale and sweaty, his aura fluctuating wildly. “Are you worried about something?” he asked, squinting his eyes. Personally, he didn’t notice anything worrisome, but perhaps Sebastian had? Otherwise, he strongly doubted that this old friend of his would have had such an extreme reaction. Sebastian was, after all, someone who kept his cool even under the most extreme conditions.

“It’s nothing,” Sebastian said and shook his head. “Don’t mind me. I remembered that I forgot to do something important. I’ll get to it once this matter is done, so let’s just watch,” he explained slowly, making sure to take a few deep breaths in between words to calm his thumping heart. He had never been so close to carelessly misjudging a social situation, neither in terms of severity of the potential consequences nor the degree to which he had misunderstood someone’s character.

When he thought about it calmly, the only good thing about his mishap was Yin going out of his way to give him a clear-cut warning. Had Yin chosen to act as if he hadn’t noticed anything, the meeting they had agreed to have with Alex could have easily resulted in disastrous consequences. “Am I also misjudging Laien, perhaps?” Sebastian asked himself. He had been confident in his assessment of Laien earlier, but after being proven wrong in Yin’s case, he started having doubts.

“My God,” Sebastian muttered accidentally, forgetting that the eyes of Alex and the four men were still on him. Alas, he was too far lost in his own musing to pay them any attention. “That would be even more terrifying. Yin is hard to deal with because I couldn’t get a read on him, but if there’s more behind Laien’s lighthearted and careless attitude, then it means that I was thoroughly and completely fooled by him. Whether he does that on purpose or if it’s just his natural way of carrying himself, he wears all of his emotions on his sleeve. The likes and dislikes, the arrogance and cheekiness, the friendliness and gratitude, they are all genuine and easy to notice. However, if he truly does have a perceptive, calculative, and vengeful side to him that’s usually hidden from strangers… Just how many people are going to suffer if they underestimate him?”

Although the temperature in the underground training cave hadn’t dropped from the comfortable twentyish degrees, Sebastian suddenly began feeling very cold. He naturally had investigated Laien and Yin’s actions from the point they had entered the Faren Yimarate and those reckless actions matched up with the personality Laien displayed. Yet, if he thought about it from another perspective, and if he added his new understanding of Yin into the mix, the likelihood of Laien being an overly honest, easy to deceive fool had to be adjusted to a much lower level. The possibility of Laien being a bit of a simpleton was still there, but the overall picture became more blurry.

“If.” Sebastian waved his hand dismissively and gestured for the four men and Alex to start paying attention to the duels, which were bound to begin soon. “If all of those events weren’t something these boys were forced into, but what they decided to take part in or refused to run away from, then everything would match up. Dear God! Those two are great to have as allies, but they would be incomparably worse to have as enemies,” he thought worryingly. He then attempted to swallow to loosen his throat a little, only to untimely realize that his mouth had gone dry as a desert.

Meanwhile, as the Department Heads and vice-heads wondered what could have made Sebastian lose his cool to such an extent, Alex revealed a slight, wry smile. If anyone were to accidentally see him at this moment, they would be able to tell that neither his smile nor expression matched his usual ‘spoiled prince personality’, as Laien had called it. Instead, this look resembled the amused and somewhat contemptuous expression which Laien tended to show from time to time.

“Teacher is just too old,” Alex mused, his expression returning to its usual state. “He is too used to playing games. His ability to judge people’s characters is likely the number one in the world, but that ironically became his restraints. The more I watch teacher’s actions, the more I’m convinced of it. Right now, too, I bet he had finally understood that those two aren’t to be underestimated. Heh, he hadn’t seen those two when they’re serious, and he doesn’t know that Laien has a good hunch about my original personality. The former probably made him assume Laien was an easygoing simpleton, while had I told him about the latter, he would have realized that the thought process of those two isn’t so simple, so shallow,” he thought, all the while suppressing a grin. He hadn’t looked forward to playing out a series of moves in a long time, so he could barely hold himself together.

“No matter what,” Alex thought, a gleam of light appearing within his eyes. “The stage is set. It’s time for us to consolidate our power. I’ll decide whether to include those two in my plans after we are done with our little chat,” he mulled, recalling the scenes of Laien talking smack back to Duke Flamesworth and the Duke’s second son. Laien and Yin almost surely weren’t aware, hell he was quite sure that his father and older brother were yet to realize that the undercurrents of the public opinion began tilting heavily in their favour ever since that day. The trend was yet to stop, and most importantly, it influenced the hearts of martial practitioners and their families the most. Even the people of Duke Flamesworth were showing discontent half-openly, so it was a huge, brewing fire, waiting to flare up.

All it would take was one well-timed spark, and they would be able to quell all the opposing factions all at once! This was a chance rare enough to make Alexander’s pulse speed up, but the youth forced himself to calm down. If anything, he too was interested in seeing Laien and Yin’s prowess with his own eyes, so since the duels were about to begin in just a few seconds, he started paying attention.