When elder Sonor finished, Nick pondered for a few minutes, then nodded and said, “So in many ways it is similar to oxygen.” He hoped that by hearing such sentence the interest of old freaks would be aroused and he could use this trap to increase his ‘book cushion’.

And it did, “Oxygen?” Elder Silvio’s ears immediately perked up.

“Detailed information is five books worth, not related to current contract.” Nick immediately blasted out a string of words like a seasoned businessman.

“Hahaha!” Grand elder laughed, “You sure know how to use opportunities, Lord Baal! It is no big matter, we agree. Please tell us.” They had similar ‘small deals before’, except five books was kind of expensive. But this information might be very important and lead to a deeper understanding on how demons use their powers. And if they did not take this chance now, no one knew when the moody Belial would agree again. Actually they tried to use as many ‘extra credit’ questions as possible, exactly because of this reason. Elders could, of course, wait for him to be ready to read next book, but there was a list of other important questions they wanted to ask. In the end it is possible they have confused themselves in all of this, but that was not Nick’s problem.

He raised his thumb, “Ok, deal.”

Then Nick started to explain how oxygen was the main source of energy in Hell, all living beings were consuming it and creating waste called carbon dioxide. When a surplus of this waste is accumulated, there are catastrophes on the surface like volcanic eruptions that discharge waste from the Hell. The oxygen itself was created by the plants of Hell and the plankton that lives in lava.

“Oh!” Elder Jan exclaimed, “You also have plankton? We also have – they are small organisms living in our seas and oceans.”

“Then they must be in some ways similar.” Nick nodded while trying his best to hold back laughter, “But ours live in lava. Yours probably is a type of water plankton, but ours – fire.”

He told how plants and plankton use the magic of photosynthesis that allows creating oxygen from the Hellfire.

All in all this was extremely ‘valuable’ information for the elders and for Nick … well, it was a difficult training session where he was practicing to not die from laughing inside.

After the Qi lecture there was a short break, the child was fed and most elders left to come back only later when the first personal question will be asked.

Now, informed on the Qi principles, Nick was really eager to learn more. This could propel him to new heights, or rather – to more extreme speeds! He could not wait until he could dash around the beaches or parks once again.

Unfortunately there won’t be his mother waiting for him next to the car, reading medical literature, but he felt his parents were always with him as long as he lived up to their values. In fact, that was the biggest reason he didn’t have any suicidal tendencies after that tragedy and could keep living. Some people just hung themselves, others started using or drinking. But Nick continued to study, because he knew his parents would love that.

At this moment there were three of them on the balcony – Nick, grand elder and elder Sonor.

Elder Sonor didn’t intend to prolong this training session unnecessarily. He gave a detailed explanation on how the three Qi gathering techniques work. They called them in trivial manner: ‘the first, the second and the third Qi technique’.

The principle was simple: the three techniques – one for sitting in meditative posture, one for walking and the last one for running, were complimentary set of techniques which allowed person via proper breathing to guide Qi through their body into their Dantian.

Nick was able to grasp concept quickly, because, while elder Sonor was explaining, grand elder guided his Qi in Nick’s body as an example and illustration. Soon Nick himself was able to perform this task, albeit slowly and with really minuscule amount of Qi. When he complained to the elders about this – they just looked stupefied at each other and shrugged … this demon was a real freak of nature, because no one could do something like that so soon.

With the walking and running techniques it was harder. Because the breathing and Qi intake was different on the move, Nick really could not practice it. The example grand elder showed in Nick’s body felt extremely uncomfortable and, for the running technique, even painful. This showed that the techniques should be actually performed while respectively walking and running, otherwise the effect would be the opposite – it would damage the body.

Nick was not a conceited person. He just asked for a paper and wrote down some notes. Obviously he chose Mandarin as a more effective way to shock elders. Elder Sonor did not seem to care much, but grand elder was looking at the ‘demonic’ language with starry eyes.

Despite Nick’s impressive comprehension abilities and grand elder’s help, it took almost three hours to complete this short training session and they decided to continue the next day.

Nick was mentally exhausted and just wanted to eat and sleep again – he had a body of a toddler after all. But the grand elder was eager to get a piece of paper as soon as possible to draw the ‘demonic signs’ he just saw. As an old and experienced Qi master, he had almost photographic memory. It meant that in a short term he would not forget a couple pages of writing, but this language seemed to be quite difficult and Nick made quite a few notes. Grand elder wanted to draw every single line down to the smallest detail, so he could discuss and judge the texts with others.

Nick took a nap, then practiced the first technique, then in his mind repeated second and third over and over again. It was a great boon for a child to have teacher of the grand elder’s caliber and Nick obviously realized it. He despised the old freak for being torturer and mass murderer, but that didn’t mean he was not able to recognize a true genius. Because of the grand elder’s practical examples, next morning Nick was almost able to recollect all the correct Qi paths without looking at his notes. He practiced the first technique repeatedly, then tried to memorize the second and the third again and again.

In the library the atmosphere was serious. Besides drawing down the ‘demonic symbols’, elders discussed the personal question part again. This time Nick didn’t prepare, but he was fresh and energetic and intended to use same tactics as yesterday – thinking a long time before saying anything, even if it seemed something simple.

After all parties did their greetings, elder Sonor solemnly asked the first question, “How do you transfer information from this body to your main body?”

Nick started to think. He had answer to this prepared already, but now he tried to think of implications, possible reactions. While thinking, he looked over all their faces, pretending to be indifferent, but still tried to find a new clue. After ten or so minutes he could not think of anything better than the answer he had prepared before.

“Depending on necessity I do it once or several times a day while I pretend to be asleep. The process itself is like a short meditation. I can do it right here, but you won’t feel or see anything, just like the ‘handshake ritual’.”

Elder’s Sonor eyes lit up and his hand unconsciously touched sword hilt. It seemed he finally got his answer – if he could kill this body instantly, Primeval demon Belial would not know. And he could instantly kill half of those present in this room! This was a great piece of news!

Nick instinctively was watching elder Sonor while giving his answer. He noticed the subtle reaction, but pretended not to see anything.

“Shall we?” Nick asked preparing to be carried out to balcony again.

“I think it would be better this time for us to have this practice in here, in the library.” Grand elder smiled his hideous smile, “You won’t be able to practice this meditation technique because you are not a Qi master. We won’t be able to demonstrate because it is not possible to guide liquid Qi outside the body.”

“Sure thing.” Nick nodded and said. Then he turned to the other elders, “You can come back tomorrow. This will take long and the toddler’s body can’t handle the fatigue.”

Other elders looked at the grand elder for instructions and the latter nodded in approval.

The following lesson was as hard as algebra in kindergarten. The concept was not that hard – when Qi master has fully replenished his liquid Qi and is not really able to gather more, he has reached the limit of his abilities or the limit of his body’s capabilities; this meditation technique allowed one to further strengthen his Dantian and Qi pathways to be able to further compress the Qi.

Sounded easy, but Nick had a suspicion that in reality it was anything but that. It would be the same concept as to compress water using your body’s power – since your body mostly consists of water, then you would be trying to compress water with water. An impossible feat!

But these freaks had found a way to do that, even more – they claimed there were few similar techniques in the world and no one could tell which one was better, because one could not train in two at the same time and compare. Grand elder’s theory was that it all lie in the potential of the practitioner and Nick was ok that. If he could get his hands on a ‘secret’ technique that the two extremely experienced Qi masters have perfected, he wouldn’t say ‘no’.

As expected, elder Sonor was not a very good lecturer, therefore grand elder assisted as much as he could, by making drawings and charts. This time they did not allow Nick to take notes because this was their own technique, so Nick could just do his best to drill all of that into his memory.

The correct order of pathways, strengthening intensity in different regions, then occasional unsafe redirection of Qi and many other things piled up one after another. The Qi system was a new concept to Nick and he was not that proficient in anatomy as well thus learning this subject was not an easy task.

They repeated everything over and over. Nick managed to eat three meals, take two naps and a bath during the breaks. As he got more and more mentally tired, he learned more and more how amazing this technique was. Of course, he did not understand even half of it, he was just memorizing visually to process it later, may be even in later years. He had no idea how hard it was for someone to become a Qi master or how long it takes. All he knew was that he had to remember all of this.

The day passed. Nick was sitting it the library on a big cushion. He was pondering, ‘I could just pretend that I haven’t learned everything yet and continue tomorrow. But these two old freaks and not total idiots. They see my progress and might start to doubt in the power of the ‘handshake ritual’. I can’t really let that happen. I just have to risk and hope I’ll still remember everything in the morning when I can go over it again.’

He decided to take this risk in the end. And, may be because he was gifted or may be because he was in the child’s body pumped full with different steroids, he did manage to remember. He tend to think it was the latter reason, but it did not really matter.

While eating and taking bath, he repeated to himself the Qi techniques first, then several times the meditation technique. This practice helped to drill the new information in his memory, hopefully for a longer time.

Finally he was ready for the movement lesson. If this was two days ago, he would think today was the highlight. But after learning for two days, he understood that the movement technique would have been useless without the others. There was a high probability elder Sonor had implemented all the previous techniques in this one and from the start Nick didn’t really believe the aristocratic heir thing. He himself was lying left and right all the time here, therefore why others couldn’t do the same?