Book 2. The Grand Gathering. Chapter 1. The Two Weeks City. (Part I)

“Tin’Long, are you going to the Devil’s Nest again today?” one of the inner disciples called out to Tin’Long who was just returning from a chat with his friends in the dormitories.

“What, you want to tag along Ritter?” Tin’Long asked with a laugh, his words enacting a series of muffled laughs from everyone around the road.

“Spare me, I’m still aching from the last time. Never again,” the sixteen-year-old youth said with an embarrassed laugh. It has already been over a week, but Laien had given him such a beating that he was still recovering. Well… it was kinda his own fault, though… he shouldn’t have been so overconfident after breaking through to the seventh mortal realm as to try ‘railing Laien up’ by saying some stupid things about his little sister… he kinda got what he asked for.

“I don’t get it, how can he be so strong?” Ritter pouted, finding it a bit hard to swallow that a twelve years old boy had wiped the floor with him. Yes, only one of his Red Dragon Arts was at the fourth level, but still! That boy was a real monster.

“He became the Great Master Rudford’s disciple for a reason,” Tin’Long said with a smile. Even though he was currently at the peak of the eight mortal realm and his ‘Dragon’s Force’ Art was at the sixth level, with the two other Red Dragon Arts at the very peak of the fifth level, he couldn’t afford to go easy on Laien while sparring with him.

“So he will beat you too quite soon, huh?” Ritter said with a smirk, trying to get back at Tin’Long a little for making fun of him.

“He already won once,” TinLong responded and shrugged his shoulders, making the dozen or so disciples who heard him completely speechless.

Tin’Long, whose Red Dragon Arts were already at a higher level than those of some Elders, who was twenty years old and reached the eighth mortal realm… lost to a twelve-year-old kid…? Even if it was just once, could it really be prescribed to something like ‘luck’?

“You kidding me? How did he beat you?” Ritter asked hurriedly, dying to know what could have happened.

“Around three months ago, he pierced my Dragon’s Body protection for the first time and wounded me pretty badly. I was careless, but a loss is still a loss,” Tin’Long admitted without beating. He wasn’t feeling too proud of this blunder, so he wouldn’t go around telling everyone on his own… but he wouldn’t make a big secret out of it either.

“That being said, maybe I shouldn’t have told anyone,” he said out of the blue, then looked around at Ritter and the other inner disciples who were listening to him. “Laien was lately complaining that fewer and fewer people are coming to spar with him. I wonder why is that?” he asked with a chuckle, although he could guess the reason on his own.

He had often been there to spectate Laien’s sparrings, so he saw how those inner disciples who at first were more or less equally matched with him, or even proved to be quite a bit stronger, continued to grow comparatively weaker. When they realized that the tables have been turned and now, Laien was holding back while fighting them… only those who could bear with this painful awareness kept coming regularly.

From what Tin’Long could see, none of those regulars were among the dozen inner disciples around him. Their sulking expressions, their cast downward gazes… they didn’t have what it took to bear with this little bit of humiliation and hone their skills through continuous fighting. Most likely, none of this group would ever reach the level of a martial master; maybe with the exception of Ritter.

“I will go and apologize to him,” Ritter mumbled to himself. Deep inside, he had truly intended to avoid the siblings from now on, but he could tell how immature it was of him. Sparring with Laien was of mutual benefits to them, so he really shouldn’t be shying away from it just because it would be awkward to apologize to him.

“That’s good and all, but not today,” Tin’Long said with a slight smile, having more or less heard what Ritter murmured. “I’m taking these two to have a look around the Two Weeks City,” he explained briefly right as the paths to the area of private quarters and to the inner quarters split in two.

“Oh, okay,” Ritter nodded in understanding and sighed just a little. This time the Grand Gathering would be held at Neil City, but he had no money to speak of to go around the Two Weeks City and have fun. The tuition fee for the Red Dragon School was one thing, while his reckless spending was the other part of the problem.

“I should have befriended those two sooner, I bet they have a lot of money,” he thought bitterly, watching Tin’Long head to the siblings’ private quarters.

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After around ten minutes of walking at a leisure pace, Tin’Long arrived at the siblings’ little mansion. Just like always, he jumped over the wall and looked around to see if the two were already outside or not.

“Not here yet, eh? I came a bit early, so might as well wait for a bit,” Tin’Long mused to himself. He walked to the bench close to the training field and sat down on it, choosing not to try waking the two up. Instead, he would tease them later about how much of a sleepy-heads they were.

More or less ten minutes later, the two walked out of their house. Hearing the doors open, Tin’Long glanced over at the siblings, then sighed a little. No matter how many times he saw them being cuddly, he would never get used to it. They just left their house, did they really need to do so while holding hands and sticking to each other like glue…?

“You two aren’t kids anymore, you really should stop clinging to each other so much,” Tin’Long called out with a resigned smile, knowing very well that he was going to get ignored anyway; at least as far as this subject was concerned.

“Do we start with a little bout like always, or do we go straight to this ‘Two Weeks City’?” Laien asked with a smile, brimming with good mood. The past two years had been like a dream to him, a dream which he fully appreciated.

“We can spar for a bit, just get warmed up though,” Tin’Long said and withdrew his longsword from his interspatial ring without waiting for Laien’s reply. He was quite sure that this little training maniac wouldn’t miss an opportunity to exchange at least a few blows with him.

“You need to show as all there is to see at this ‘Grand Gathering’ later, okay?” Laien mentioned with a smile. He had heard a few things about this event and knew that all three Great Families, the three Great Martial School and the Royal Family would be sending their representatives. He also knew that the Grand Gathering took place once every five years and that it would usually involve things like smaller and bigger tournaments which served the various martial schools to show off the strength of their disciples.

“I will, I will,” Tin’Long reassured with a laugh. He had been to the Grand Gathering three times already, so he more or less knew what would be interesting to watch or participate in.

Laien smiled and entered the training field with Tin’Long. He drew his white spear from the black gold interspatial ring which he wore on the ring finger of his right hand.

He has grown taller since the time the weapon had been forged for him, so the Living Steel spear of his had adjusted itself and now was around two meters long. It still, however, weighed around forty-five kilograms, as anything heavier would be uncomfortable for Laien to wield with his current strength and physique.

A weak, helpless smile appeared on Tin’Long’s face. This spear of Laien’s… he had broken two top-grade longswords on it and only after his master, the Grand Elder went out of his way to gift him an extremely precious blade, had this problem been solved.

“The quality of this spear is one thing, his unique abilities are the other,” Tin’Long thought with a sigh. Any normal person would have gone broke in no time if he wanted to spar with Laien on a daily basis. After all, unless the weapon used was truly exquisite, it would continue breaking. A top-grade longsword was only enough to last a little less than a year… so high-grade weapons would likely crumble into pieces after a few weeks, if not sooner.

Getting ready, Laien swirled his spear in an overexaggerated and unnecessary, but very cool looking manner. He lowered his stance and grabbed the shaft with both of his hands, then gave Tin’Long a questioning look, asking if he is ready to start.

Tin’Long nodded, having already placed himself in the earth stance. He held his longsword in front of himself, ready to deflect Laien’s thrusts at any time.

Truthfully, he preferred the aggressive ‘heaven stance’ which involved holding both of his hands above his head, with the longsword pointing slightly downwards at the opponent… but ever since Laien became capable of piercing his Dragon’s Body Art, he couldn’t afford to stake everything on offense. Against a spear, he didn’t have a range advantage and with Laien’s defensive capabilities, he couldn’t hope to bear with a lighter wound in exchange for landing a solid, fight-ending blow.

“Ugh,” Tin’Long groaned secretly, seeing how Laien was waiting for him to make the first move with a cheeky smile. At first, it wasn’t that hard for him to deflect Laien’s spear and force his way in… but after two years, unless he forced himself in with brute strength and made use of his overwhelming speed advantage, he would end up being toyed to death by an endless series of thrusts and the in-between swipes of Laien’s spear.

Perhaps it was why spear wasn’t a highly regarded weapon around these parts of the world… fighting against a spear master was extremely frustrating. Given how low the number of spear wielders was and how unused people were to facing this kind of weapon, it only made the disparity between the sword and the spear worse.

Left with no other choice, Tin’Long changed his approach and lowered his longsword to his hips, the blade pointing behind him. From the ‘cleaving stance’, he swung his longsword in an attempt to let it clash with the upper part of Laien’s spear. He wanted to create a split-second opening which he could use to step in, but alas; Laien timed his own move perfectly.

Just about the time when Tin’Long had no choice but to follow through with the slash, Laien twisted his body and removed the spear from the way. He took two quick steps in place, moving forward ever so slightly and delivered a powerful sweep from down below, which landed heavily against Tin’Long’s guard.

“Chance,” Tin’Long smirked, but in his heart knew that this rough ‘trick’ wouldn’t have worked out had Laien been as physically strong as him. He simply wouldn’t have been able to afford to block an all-out sweep from this annoyingly heavy spear and try stepping inside right afterward. He would have needed to put too much strength into keeping his own balance after defending.

However, Laien wasn’t at such a level yet. Thus, Tin’Long used the opportunity and slid the edge of his longsword against the shaft of Laien’s spear, jumping forward and closing the distance in the blink of an eye.

“Tch,” Laien winced angrily, being forced to release his left hand from the spear under the threat of losing his fingers. “Wasn’t it only supposed to be a warm-up?” he thought with a snort. If Tin’Long insisted on using his superior physique to force a quick victory, then he wouldn’t be restraining himself either…!

As the sparks were flying from the longsword which was sliding against his spear, Laien tightened the grip of his right hand and pressed as hard as he could. At the same time, he allowed his body to lose balance and in fact, even pushed onto the ground with his left leg… while doing something incomprehensible for a mere onlooker. He actually pulled his right leg up as he was literally lifting himself up into the air, using Tin’Long’s longsword as a counter pressure point.

“Converge,” Laien controlled a very small amount of his spiritual energy, creating a solid foothold just below his right feet. He stomped on it and jumped horizontally, getting away from Tin’Long in a strange, but a very swift movement which otherwise would have been impossible.

“No, you don’t,” Laien smirked, seeing that Tin’Long stomped at the ground and jumped to the side, attempting to follow him. He created yet another foothold in mid-flight and used it to once again jump backward and gain some distance, but also stabilized and straightened his position.

Still in the air, he grabbed his spear with both hands and prepared to throw a thrust, intending to meet Tin’Long’s attack straight on.

“That’s a bit…” Tin’Long halted despite having gotten quite riled up. It wasn’t that he wasn’t confident in deflecting Laien’s attack and pressing on, but if they kept it up, it wouldn’t be anything like a warm-up anymore. To be honest, both of them kinda went a bit too serious at it from the very beginning anyway…

“Hm? That’s it?” Laien landed smoothly, choosing to stop through a series of smaller jumps instead of breaking the fall abruptly. Since Tin’Long wasn’t coming at him anymore, there was no need to overexert himself and destroy the training field, which he would later need to flatten to an usable state… eh; couldn’t there be some people taking care of it? Why did he need to do it by himself?

“We were getting a bit too heated up,” Tin’Long said with a laugh. They might have intended to go easy at first, but after sparring hundreds of times they couldn’t help being competitive.

“Maybe,” Laien shrugged his shoulders. He was yet to use his Aspect of Tranquility or Principle of Energy and Tin’Long similarly was yet to employ his Red Dragon Arts, so he thought they were already holding back enough…?

“How about it, let’s leave our sparring until evening. Then, we will be able to go at it as hard as we want,” Tin’Long suggested, trying to reach some kind of compromise.

“Good idea,” Laien agreed quickly. He would be able to enjoy the day if he wasn’t tired, so he didn’t object to putting off the training.

“You might want to change into something more informal before we go, though,” Tin’Long mentioned, worried that the usual clothes of the siblings would attract way too much unwanted attention. A Core Disciple like him would already get some gazes, but those two with the black dragons sigils on their shirts… they wouldn’t be able to walk around in peace at all.

“Right, we completely forgot,” Laien said with a chuckle. He put his spear back into the interspatial ring and swapped his clothes for an identical set, but one that had only two crossed dragon claws on the shirt. “Nice, right? We asked elder brother for them some time ago,” Laien smiled wryly. Going to the city incognito and pretending to be a simple inner disciple was definitely included in his ‘amusing things to do’ list.

Tin’Long shook his head with a resigned smile. He should have expected these siblings to come up with something along those lines. Really, it was just like them.

“Just don’t go overboard teasing people just to make fun of them later,” Tin’Long said and laughed dryly. Who was he kidding, Laien would find a chance to make a fuss anyway and even if he didn’t, the fuss would find him. That was the kind of strange luck this boy had.

“The Two Weeks City is on the other end of Neil City, right?” Siana spoke up after swapping her own set of clothes. She wasn’t a strong spiritual practitioner like her brother and she was yet to learn a Qi Manipulating Art, so she needed a few more seconds to concentrate well enough as to not end up standing bare-naked because of a slight delay. “If we are going there on the horses, want to make a bet?” she proposed while looking Laien in the eye and paying Tin’Long... well, much less attention.

“What kind of?” Laien asked readily, always up to a challenge. Especially if the results could end up being quite interesting, if not to say amusing.

“We race through the city. The one who arrives first can give one order of any kind to the other two,” Siana explained, all the while gazing at her big brother. The two of them didn’t need to mention it; they knew what kind of requests the other would make if proved victorious.

“I’m in,” Laien accepted eagerly and chuckled a little. Whoever was to win, him or Siana, the results would be equally pleasant.