Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 223. The Training Rooms’ Benefits.

The next day Laien and Yin faced the second round of challengers with a new mindset. Although neither of them made that many adjustments in their general behaviour, they made adjustments to the fighting part. Yin no longer went all-out on improving his Thundercloud Sword Art while Laien didn’t taunt his opponent on purpose. Using the comfortable advantage in combat prowess, the two of them repeatedly showed their temporary students where and what they were lacking. They exploited openings but never followed through with the fight-ending blow, they showed openings in order to better guide their opponents’ fighting style, and they gave examples of effective tactics through adjusting their own actions. In short, they went all in on the teacher mentality.

During the fight, the older boy and girl duo, having been cautioned by the Department Heads before the spar, were able to curb their arrogance fairly quickly. Before they fought Laien and Yin they had had their doubts, but those were dispelled the moment they realized how powerless they were. Ironically, while the two of them gained some benefits, by the end of the duels they looked depressed. The shock of two twelve-year-old boys not treating them as opponents but as students to be taught was too much for them to handle. Their confidence as upcoming experts was thoroughly broken, leaving them in a state not quite as bad as having a Heart Demon, but not far either.

Once Sebastian, the two Heads, and two Vice-Heads understood what had happened, they were left speechless. They had been thankful in the beginning, seeing that Laien and Yin weren’t overdoing it like the day before. Yet after the duels ended, all of them wore awkward expressions on their faces. The two who had come to fight today were ranked 14th and 8th in the Earth Quarters, were fifteen years old, and had been strengthening their foundations in preparation for the breakthrough to the Realm of Heroes since a year ago. Alas, they never posed danger to Laien and Yin no matter how hard they tried. Worse off, everyone could tell that Laien and Yin had been relaxed the entire time. This only meant that they had never been forced to try seriously nor to show any of their trump cards.

“Cautioning them won’t be enough,” Sebastian said depressingly once they left Laien and Yin’s mansion and sent the two students off. “At this rate, this whetstone will break our students instead of sharpening them. The difference is too big,” he complained, sighing heavily. Their own Heaven’s Quarters students were powerful and talented, too, but compared to Laien and Yin, they were too green. These two boys had no weaknesses to exploit and their strengths were too overwhelming, leaving their opponents in a pickle. The two boys had abundant life-or-death experience, too, so their mentality was leagues beyond those students from the Earth Quarters. After all, no number of training exercises, no matter how harsh and difficult, could compare to a real battlefield.

“True,” the Spiritual Department Head supported. “I think it’s time we end the farce of those duels being competition for the Heaven Quarters’ spots. At least unofficially, we will tell the students that they should think of this as gaining experience. Having this little tournament under pretences of competition to motivate our students was a good idea in general, but we underestimated those two little monsters. When the difference between your expectations and reality is too overwhelming, it’s not surprising for those students to be shocked out of their minds,” he commented with a weak, wry smile. Deep inside, he was glad that they developed friendly relations with those two youths, else they would have had no choice but to kill them off to prevent future trouble. Monsters on this level were too dangerous to be left on the loose, so they could be either allies or corpses.

“Not just students,” the Martial Department Head added wryly, glancing at his Vice-Head. Those Spiritual Department guys had had it easy since Laien hadn’t shown much, but he himself had taken a blow to his martial heart after witnessing Yin’s talent with the sword. He had been able to come to terms with it, but his Vice-Head’s Qi seemed to be more restless than usual today. The source of this was likely the man’s mental instability, what if not dealt with could lead to stagnation of his cultivation. Not that he cared all that much since the man was an informant from the Royal Factions, but the fact remained that his Vice-Head’s instability had been caused by a twelve-year-old boy.

“Anyway,” the Martial Department Head said, moving on from his internal musings. “I suggest we introduce them as Vladimir-level monsters from now on. Once someone is too far for you to even see their back, you stop envying or being pressured by them. You simply fear, admire, and respect the man,” he suggested. Vladimir’s fearful image should still be fresh in the minds of their students, so using him as a comparison ought to have desired effects. Even if not all of those prideful youngsters were convinced immediately, they at least should no longer experience such a shock after the fight.

“It’s an idea,” Sebastian said with a nod. “I hope it won’t backfire, though. You all know how Vladimir is, he only ever listens to Azuresky. Once they are back from the barbarian countries we’ll have to keep an eye on him,” he cautioned, wary of Vladimir’s tendencies. In the first place, it was because of Vladimir and his obsession with fighting and getting stronger that the moniker ‘monster’ became popular in the region. Once this battle addict came back and learned that two kids were being compared to him, he would rush to fight them without asking for anyone’s opinion nor permission. If this event wasn’t managed properly, someone could die… and it wouldn’t be Vladimir.

“Besides that,” Sebastian continued. “Make sure to tighten the gag order. No true information about those two can leak from our Academy City. Limit it to the rumours of the two’s exceptional performance. Especially you two and the rest of your agents,” he ordered, giving the two Vice-Heads a threatening look. “When you are making your reports, do it directly to the Kings. I don’t care what orders you might have, but if I find out that you leaked more than appropriate, I’ll have your heads,” he said while releasing his aura. He trusted his own people enough, but he would no longer tolerate the presence of those Royal Agents if they caused more trouble than their presence was worth.

That said, the pressure of a spiritual master of the seventh rank mixed with quite a few threads of killing intent seemed to drive the point well. The two Vice-Heads nodded solemnly and bent their backs, finding it hard to withstand the pressure as blood drained from their faces. Sebastian was usually an easy-going person, but they knew better than to judge a book by its cover. They also knew enough about Sebastian’s background to understand that the man wouldn’t throw around empty threats. If he said he would have their heads in case they went too far, he would do exactly that.

“Eh.” Nonetheless, Sebastian sighed secretly. All he could do was hope that these fools wouldn’t forget this warning once they were out of his sight. He had cared about Laien and Yin ever since he heard of their prowess and talent from Casimir’s reports, yet their value in his eyes continued to grow constantly. The more he learned about their character and the more he witnessed their strength with his own eyes, the more enthusiastic he became. However, the last nail to the coffin was Alexander’s news from the day before. His pupil decided to form a proper alliance with Laien and Yin and would work with them for the foreseeable future. Alexander appeared to be very satisfied when telling him about that, too, so he had no other choice but to offer his full support.

It remained to be seen what the future held for these three, but Sebastian had a certain inkling. Once the time came, when those three felt that they were ready, they would bring a great storm not just to their own countries, but to the entire Starlight Continent. This had been bound to happen even before they met, but now that they did and managed to come to an agreement, those future waves were bound to be far more consequential. Be it as it may, even amongst the generation of monsters that was growing all over the world, they were heads and shoulders above everyone else.

… Perhaps with the exception of freaks like Vladimir, who knew nothing but cultivation and battle. Alas, no matter how strong Vladimir was, he was still but one man. Compared to the waves those three could stir, one big stone paled in comparison. Especially if that stone was only interested in growing into a bigger and tougher rock, showing no interest in the sea waters at all.

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While Sebastian was talking with his four associates, Laien and Yin headed towards the elemental training chambers at the underground’s outer ring. They had been curious about those for quite a while, but first they were resting for a few days and then they weren’t in the mood after chatting with Alexander. Thus, when an opportunity came the following day, they didn’t need to think twice.

Once they arrived at crossroads, in the very middle of the huge underground structure, they exchanged a quick glance and proceeded to leisurely run to their respective elemental chambers.

For the purposes of reinforcing their cultivation, they were bound to need high-density elemental energy, so they went into the smaller, cave-like rooms. They had learned the first time around that all the chambers had the same degree of durability, so they saw no need to waste Academy’s resources by needlessly using the large versions. Perhaps they would one day try the large ones if they wanted to try out their techniques in a high-energy place, but that would be for the future.

Inside the training chambers, their actions ended up being similar, if not almost identical. The rooms had a control stele embedded in the middle, allowing them to adjust the mechanisms through willpower alone. According to the instructions from outside the rooms, trainees were encouraged to keep a hand on the stele the entire time in case an accident occurred. This was the so-called physical assurance, whereas an option of maintaining a mental connection with the stele to keep the chamber running existed as a secondary option. Laien and Yin, however, felt that such things would only distract them from training, so they disabled the safety mechanisms and sent the stele into the floor. They had no need for a pole sticking out in the middle of the chamber anyway.

Their actions were admittedly reckless since, if an accident occurred, no one from Academy City would know until it was too late. Yet, not only did they have their Spiritual Link as an assurance, they boasted Absolute and Heavenly cultivation bases of their own elements. Since an option to disable safeties existed even for the regular monsters of the Holy Union, they surely had little to fear. They were confident enough and didn’t want anything or anyone to bother them at a crucial moment, so they reached the same conclusion at the same time despite not having talked about it beforehand.

Finally, after they took a few deep breaths to enter a half-meditative state, they controlled the training rooms’ formations and sent elemental energies in at full throttle. The respective channels embedded within the chambers’ walls opened, letting in streams of water-element and lightning-element energies. The elemental particles, in their purest form, behaved much like wind or water, flooding the chambers at the ground level and filling them upwards. The rate at which those particles accumulated would have been enough to make a ‘normal genius’ faint, but to Laien and Yin, the experience was anything but dangerous. In fact, it was quite pleasant and relaxing.

Both of them felt as if they were being caressed by a gentle breeze and, if it made sense, as if they were eating a tasty dessert at the same time. As the concentration of elemental particles in their rooms grew, they could feel them entering their bodies with each breath they took. What was a dangerous experience to others due to overly potent nature of artificially obtained elemental energy, was a walk in the park for them. After all, unless it was another Absolute or Heavenly elemental energy, it would be incredibly hard for their own elements to harm them in any way.

After roughly a minute, the elemental pressure within both of the training chambers reached its peak and stabilized. Although the supply channels remained open, no more sparks could be pressed into the rune-enhanced training chambers. Thus, once more, Laien and Yin did the same thing. They commanded the formations to close the channels, then brought out the top-grade elemental stones. Making use of the ones with Academy City’s restrictions on them, they sent them into the secondary formations engraved on the floor. Perhaps brashly, the two of them sent a few dozen top-grade elemental stones each, despite manuals suggesting to use them up one by one.

Nonetheless, the runic formations lit up regardless of the creator’s concerns. The blue and white-purplish stones began shining with visible light as all the energy within them was being mercilessly extracted, making for a fairly beautiful spectacle. As seconds passed and as the new elemental sparks were added to the already existing ones, the pressure within the chambers spiked to an unbelievable degree. This caused the runic formation engraved on and into the chambers to lit up as it went into an overdrive, doing its best to restrain and contain all the unruly elemental particles.

Unfortunately for these formations, the piles of top-grade stones were still far from being depleted. However, even as the elemental pressure kept rising, Laien and Yin remained calm.

Laien had discovered early on that Academy City’s formations were all interconnected. He seriously doubted that when one part of the formation experienced excessive stress, the rest of it would remain inactive and oblivious to the dangerous event. And, exactly as Laien thought, the formation of the entire underground training space soon came to life, joining the two small chambers in their efforts. Even without extending their senses outwards, both Laien and Yin could sense the gargantuan quantities of energy that were filling those vast and complicated formations.

“Pretty good,” Laien mused with a smile. It had taken around ten minutes for those forty-plus top-grade elemental stones to be depleted fully. Currently, Laien guessed that the elemental pressure in his chamber would be enough to kill a spiritual master of the forth rank and maybe even some of the weaker ones of the fifth rank. Martial masters would have an easier time thanks to their robust bodies, but they wouldn’t be much better off, either. As for him… He actually felt great. If not for his Spiritual Sea getting a bit churny due to the intake of pure elemental energy in large amount, he would have been tempted to throw another few dozen elemental stones into the formation.

“At this rate,” Laien continued to ponder absent-mindedly. From what he could tell, he would be fine if he stayed in such environment for about four hours a day. Any more and his Spiritual Sea would become too chaotic for him to contain it. “It should take me about… four to eight months to get to the peak of the mortal realm. It all depends if this rate of absorption will remain consistent or if it will start diminishing. Still, it’s much better than the two or three years it’d have taken me otherwise,” he thought, trying to be optimistic. So far they had used up something close to three months and a half from their year-long deadline to arrive at the Eclipse Academy. Still, he didn’t want to stall Yin’s training, so they had to arrive there with half a year, or at least five months, to spare.

This meant that he had roughly three months of training in Academy City. Even in the best-case scenario, it wouldn’t be enough to propel him to advance to the Realm of Heroes. As advantageous as his self-created cultivation method was, the amount of Qi and spiritual energy he needed for each breakthrough was painful. Sure, it meant that his overall power at the same level would be far greater than of others, but if he fell too much behind Yin, then that advantage wouldn’t matter. What’s more, it wasn’t like Yin’s combat prowess was going to be below his any any level, in the first place. He had to find a reliable, long-term method of cultivating quickly or he would lose to Yin.

“It’s already this bad from the early ninth mortal realm to the peak. How bad is it going to be in the Realm of Heroes, eh?”

Sighing inwardly, Laien let go of the distracting thoughts. Maybe those Danger Zones they had chatted about with Yin would be of some use to him, too. Or maybe he would find another good way of propelling his cultivation forward without doing damage to his foundation. That would remain to be seen, but for the time being, he had to focus on making the best use of the current opportunity.

“Cultivating Nine Refinements of Mortality now… would be a death wish. I might as well focus on my water element insights, given the environment.” Having made his choice, Laien let go of the remnants of his lucidity and sank into meditative trance. He would be able to tell when his Spiritual Sea reached its limits even in that state, so he didn’t worry at all as he entered it. He thus sat there cultivating, with the azure elemental sparks being drawn into his body every time he breathed in, sometimes even seeping in through his skin due to how densely packed they were.

Meanwhile, Yin had similarly chosen to ponder the Elemental Law of Lightning within his own training chamber. Unlike in Laien’s case, however, the elemental sparks served little purpose in increasing his cultivation. Whenever they entered his body, they would be devoured by his Heavenly Lightning, giving him little to no actual cultivation benefit. Simply enough, the qualitative difference between those lightning sparks and his Heavenly Lightning was much too vast to improve the latter.

Still, the pressure did have an actual, albeit small, effect on Yin’s body. It helped to temper it and get it even more used to lightning before his breakthrough to the Realm of Heroes. Alas, the controlled environment of those chambers were actually detrimental to this process. What Yin truly needed was a bunch of dangerous, wild, and unrestrained lightning and not this lukewarm soup.

That said, if anyone besides Laien learned of those thoughts of his, they would be hard pressed to remain calm. Just how much of a monster did one need to be to think of an environment deadly to most martial and spiritual masters of the fourth rank as lukewarm? If an objective answer needed to be given to that question, then it was that Heavens were inherently unfair. Just like that azure-haired youth had said in the Anarchic Lands, the further one progressed on the path of cultivation, the more differences between levels of cultivation bases would be magnified. With Absolute and Heavenly ones reigning over all the lower ones, their possessors were bound to enjoy immense advantages.

“Should I add more stones?” the idea briefly passed through Yin’s mind. However, he was fairly sure that increasing the density of those harmless sparks would be useless for him. Thus, he made up his mind to treat this chamber as a trip to accompany Laien and a chance to get more familiar with lightning-element insights. As for strengthening his body, that regrettably did not work out.

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While Laien and Yin were calmly meditating in their training chambers, something else was taking place in the bottommost layers of Academy City.

Within a spacious room the size of a large single household, a small stone covered by ancient runes laid in its very middle. Usually a gentle stream of energy would be drained out of it by the formations of the room. However, at the moment the pure natural spiritual energy was being released wildly, easily at the rate forty or fifty times higher than usual. That said, it wouldn’t have been anything noteworthy if it was just a momentary spike resulting from someone testing a spell or a martial technique. Such things were common and happened routinely, no one would panic over it.

The issue was that the huge stream of energy the formation was draining from the ancient stone was showing no signs of stopping!

“God damn!” Sebastian cursed, rushing towards the Elder overseeing the Power Core Chambers. He had just finished discussing future duels with the Head and Vice-Heads, but before he could head back to his office, such an unusual incident had to happen. “What in the world is going on?” he asked, looking worriedly at the brightly lit up runic formation of the first Power Core Chamber. Thanks to the control he had over Academy City’s runic formations, he could more or less sense what was happening. Still, he needed to know more if he were to quickly solve this crazy incident.

“Rector,” the grey-haired old woman bowed her head. Emergency or not, formalities had to be adhered to! “The energy is being siphoned to one of the training spaces in Heavenly Quarters. I believe it’s going towards the ones recently assigned to the two foreigner youths. Due to my insufficient ability, I can’t tell you much more. I apologize,” the old woman explained bitterly. She wished she could have given the man she admired a proper explanation once asked, but her soul was too weak to scour the faraway points of the formation in detail. Still, since the formation itself wasn’t taking countermeasures against what was going on, then it wasn’t a malfunction or an attack.

However, she was sure that Sebastian had long since understood this much himself, so she saw no need to waste his time with useless words.

“Understood,” Sebastian answered briefly. He was well aware of that old woman’s character – that was the only reason he bothered to ask her anything instead of accessing the runic formation immediately. “Let me check,” he said as he put his hand onto the control panel of the first Power Core Chamber. He hurriedly sank his consciousness into the vast net of formations and effortlessly found the spot the energy was aggregating towards. It wasn’t hard and if anything, it would have been harder to miss it as it was akin to a huge pyre of flames in the sea of dim, candle-like flickers.

“Heavens!” Sebastian almost lost focus, risking backlash from the huge runic formation. “Did the fail-safe not kick in? Did those two add in too many elemental stones?” he questioned, trying to recollect his mind enough to check the actual situation. Although he had warned Laien and Yin of the so-called ‘potential dangers’ of cultivating in elemental chambers, it was all a load of bull. Which sane Academy would risk the lives of their greatest geniuses just to teach them some restraint? Of course the rules were made up and if one lost consciousness or if their life force began dropping dangerously, the formations were set to release all the accumulated elemental energy.

Yet they weren’t! There had never been an incident with a student overestimating himself and needing the fail-safe to save him. Thus, Sebastian couldn’t help but worry if the Rune Masters had screwed up somehow when engraving this part of the grand formation. His heart was thumping so hard that he was worried it would stop as he tried to get his consciousness into the training chambers of Laien and Yin’s mansion. If those two died in his Academy City, forget a Three-Way Alliance, they might get a Three-Way War instead! It would be a total disaster!

Luckily for Sebastian’s poor heart, he soon sensed Laien’s and Yin’s life forces in their training chambers. There was no sign of them weakening despite the runes working overtime to contain the excess elemental energy present there. This brought immense relief to Sebastian at first, but once his brain started working again, his expression sank right afterwards. The corners of his mouth started twitching and his eyes widened as he understood what was going on and what it entailed.

“Top-grade elemental stones… how many have I given them again?” Sebastian muttered as the comprehension dawned upon him. Thanks to the ancient artifacts and some ingenious methods, Academy City was rich in power of all kinds, be it the natural one or the elemental ones. However, if those two kept draining the natural elemental energy at this absolutely maddening rate for several hours every day… They would go bankrupt within half a year! And that was only if they continued to dig deeper into their pockets in that time. If they didn’t, three months would be the limit!