With days flying by Nick and Zia didn’t forget to have fun as well. While it was still summer, they frequently went to dive in the reef with boys and from time to time had lunch in the “Sunshine”.

One had to respect the three little aristocrats – after seeing the strict training schedule of Nick and Zia, everyone felt they could be left behind and even the usually lazy Mason was training really hard. Each of them tried to squeeze their families dry of training resources and the results were not negligible. When the autumn came, they were already able to stay under water for over ten minutes, sometimes almost fifteen. And mostly this was the result of diligent Qi practices.

Nick didn’t waste his time even while swimming. He invented his own Qi sub-technique that allowed him to train under water similarly to how he did while running in the forest using the third Qi technique. The strange thing was that the practice under water felt even more effective than on the surface.

Regarding this he had long a discussion with Paul. He even tried to ask Ling for help, but the latter just shrugged – he had never heard such thing, so could not comment. But Paul was more interested. Reef was the love of his life and despite being over sixty and still only a Qi practitioner, he never stopped improving – it just was that his talents were not particularly good.

They both sat and theorized about the Qi circulation and absorption under water, drew schematics and in the end decided to apply their ideas in a long term practice to see the results.

And the results didn’t make them wait for too long. One chilly autumn morning Paul entered the royal kitchen and to stupefied trio of Nick, Ben and Nigel announced that he has become a Qi master.

First of all it was almost impossible feat to become Qi master at his age. Usually if one didn’t become a Qi master till forty, they would stay Qi practitioner for the whole life. And second, Paul’s Qi condensated while he was several meters under the water! None of them had ever heard of anything similar happening before and for Paul and Nick it was too much of a coincidence.

It didn’t mean Paul suddenly gained a huge amount of Qi due to the new technique, more likely he finally used more appropriate technique for his body that had spent years under water. Also Nick had a hunch that the water pressure might have had something to do with the Qi condensation process.

The new discovery didn’t make Nick want to condensate the Qi faster, on contrary, he wanted to increase his Qi capacity and amount first. He remembered elder Sonor’s lecture well and the concept that the Qi masters had much harder time to increase their Qi – with practice they recovered Qi faster, they could use Qi more effectively, but the total volume almost never changed. There were few exceptions, for example, the meditation technique Nick got from his deal which helped not only to strengthen the pathways, but to increase amount of Qi in Dantian as well, but such exceptions were very few and the increase was very minuscule.

Paul had increased his Qi since he joined the army over forty years ago, therefore, even if he was not a bright talent, his strength should be impressive. But Ben and Nigel felt this whole situation was like feeding pearls to a pig, because the second thing Paul said was, “Now I can dive even longer and deeper!”

Acknowledging their own progress, Nick gave an exciting present to the cheering Zia – he introduced another fun exercise in their training program. Over the little lake from the tree on the one side to another on the opposite side he tied a long and durable rope. Now they had to practice to walk on it over the lake to train their balance.

To celebrate the new exercise, Zia even invited Mason, Chris and Steven and, to their despair, demonstrated that she could ‘already’ manage till the half of the lake before falling in with a loud splash.

The summer was already over and water was not at all pleasant, but both Nick and Zia didn’t seem to mind at all. The other three tried few times, quickly waved goodbyes and, with their teeth chattering from cold, told this crazy couple that they would meet them in the next spring.

Several days later, when both of them were already capable of walking over the lake without falling in, Nick tied a second rope nearby and now, to Zia’s great joy, they could compete in speed. Because of this competition they were trying to go fast or even run and that usually ended with loosing concentration at some point and a short swim to the shore after that.

Of course, they didn’t just run without thinking. Both discussed how the third Qi technique could improve their balance or how could they circulate the Qi in their feet to increase not only the speed, but the stability as well. Obviously body’s balance was the main issue, but if Qi masters could run up the vertical walls, why couldn’t Qi be used to stabilize the body in other situations?

Unfortunately for them scaling walls was not an option, at least for now. Nick tried different ways, but most he could manage was three meters. After that he needed a support to propel him higher. The treasury house’s walls were over ten meters high without any protrusions so there was no way to get up directly even if they somehow managed to evade the guards.

One of the earlier ideas Nick considered was to shoot an arrow with a tied rope to it to the top of the building and then climb up, but the frequent patrols had a high chance to discover them or the dangling rope. Therefore they decided to get on the treasury building’s roof from another nearby building. Thus the rope walking exercise came up. Both of them knew the importance of this practice and continued to train diligently every day.

When the days got shorter, the nights got colder as well. Even the warm streams in Aurora bay didn’t always manage to rescue the city from autumn’s frost at night. The days were still warm when the sun from time to time managed to squeeze through the thick clouds and interrupt the frequent rain.

On one particularly cold morning Ben met Nick on the outskirts of the Royal forest for their usual hunt. It was still dark and very chilly, they even noticed that there was a thin layer of ice covering the forest lake. As usual Nick didn’t bring any weapons except for the dagger on his calf – he had gotten used to it since they started to dive on the reef during the summer.

The rain had not fallen during last couple of days and the Royal woods were pleasantly dry and cool. They already started to check the rabbit traps when Ben suddenly stopped. There were two bodies lying between the bushes not far from them and judging from the armor – those were dead palace guards.

“Nick!” Ben whispered, but before boy could react, four people dressed in black and wearing black masks showed up between the trees and, holding weapons in their hands, slowly surrounded them.

“Sound the alarm, probably there are assassins already in the palace. Go, quickly!” Ben gave command while taking the bow off his back.

Nick immediately recovered his senses and dashed out of the encirclement in the direction of the palace. He understood that he had no ability to help Ben here and the only useful thing he could do was to call for help. He couldn’t comprehend how these people got here, since the perimeter was guarded and, if some guards were killed, others definitely would notice. But this was not the time to think – he just darted between two assassins right after Ben spoke.

“Get the kid!” One of the masked men instructed.

But what happened next stupefied even him. Two arrows almost at the same time hit both men who intended to grab Nick – one in the chest, who, probably, fell down dead and the other one in the leg. Then Ben drew a short sword and jumped towards the injured one.

The leader of the four reacted almost as quickly. He managed to get in front of the attacked comrade and block Ben’s attack with his saber.

“F*ck, a Qi master!” Ben cursed.

“You! Go catch that kid and bring him back!” The leader commanded the fourth man and without caring about Ben, took few steps towards his already fallen comrade. The fourth man immediately ran after Nick who meanwhile managed to increase his distance to almost hundred meters.

“You are really good with the bow or extremely lucky to kill Mike, even if he was careless.” The leader said, “But your luck ends here.”

Suddenly a shout of a child’s voice echoed through the forest, “Old man, don’t you dare to die now. I’ll be back in a minute!”

Ben showed a smile on his face and said to the assassin, “I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you.”

“Do you think that a kid can outrun a Qi master and call for help? You’re getting delusional from old age.” Assassin snorted.

“We’ll see about that.” Ben got serious and took few steps back.

The one wounded in the leg also got up and intended to help his leader. Even if he was bleeding a little and his movements were not that agile, he was still a Qi master. Facing two of those even for someone with Ben’s experience was a deadly crisis.

Nick like felt he had never ran so fast in his life. He concentrated and performed the third Qi technique and accelerated even faster. But the man behind him seemed to catch up easily.

‘Are those Qi masters? Can I even outrun them in that case? And will Ben be ok?’

He had many questions in his mind, but tried to not think and do what he usually did the best – to run. The distance to the palace was a bit further than three kilometers and it might even take over ten minutes to get there and back. There was no way Ben could survive.

The Qi master behind Nick has closed already to fifty meters and was still closing up.

‘Good thing it is just some random person. If he was on Ling’s or Sonor’s level, I would’ve been dead by now.’ He thought.

Nick saw the small forest lake appear between the trees. He suddenly got an idea.

‘Please work, please work … just this once!’ Nick shouted in his mind and his feet already stepped on the thin ice.

Tik, tik, tik … his short but fast footsteps resounded on the lake as he dashed over it. The Qi master didn’t think much of it and just followed. Nick used everything he learned up until now to circulate the Qi in his feet to keep the ice from braking and in a few moments reached the other side just to hear a loud splash and cursing coming from the lake. His gamble paid off – the assassin saw Nick was just a kid and not a Qi master, so he got careless and didn’t pay attention to the thin ice that was almost non existent on the surface of the lake. Nick’s running made it seem like it was solid and won’t break.

It took few seconds for the wet and angry Qi master to get out, but those bought Nick the necessary distance. It was not possible for the man to catch him anymore – the palace was already in sight.