Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 27. The Divine Seal.

“You will be surprised when you see where I live!” the six-year-old called out happily, urging Laien to hurry up and come to the forefront of the group.

Laien raised an eyebrow, then made his black horse go through the middle of the path, forcing the black-robed men to make a way or be trampled, what they indeed did with some frowning.

“Waah!” the six-year-old yelped when Laien’s horse pushed his back with his head and sent him tumbling to the side. He tried to regain balance, but failed to do so and fell to the ground.

“Oi, what’s gotten into you?” Laien leaned forward and scratched Bellicose’s neck with a little smirk on his face. The six-year-old didn’t hurt himself, but he did end up tearing his robe; not with some branches, but with his own strength when he had tried to make a long step after being pushed. “You okay there?” Laien inquired without much concern, seeing that the six-year-old was glancing at him with a helpless smile on his face.

On the contrary, Uluan, his son Kalan and the rest of the black-robed men were… unexpectedly unconcerned with the incident. One would have thought they would be angry at Laien for what his horse did, but apparently now that their Holy Priest was once again safe they loosened their attitudes up considerably.

“Uuu, your horse is evil, big brother,” the six-year-old grumbled, though he was less concerned with his fall than with Laien’s response to his words just now. When he saw Laien smile and chuckle after he called him ‘big brother’, he breathed with relief and brightened up even more. He quickly stood up, waiting for Laien to make his horse go forward again so he could follow right by his side.

“Maybe he is just in a bad mood,” Laien said with a laugh. “Want to come up here and ride with me?” he suggested, then laughed again when the six-year-old shook his head strongly. “Fine, then could you tell me your name? By the way, I’m Laien and that’s Yin,” he said with a grin, then propelled his hips in the saddle and made Bellicose begin gaiting ahead.

“I don’t have a name,” the six-year-old answered straightforwardly but didn’t quite manage to hide the fact that he was only pretending not to care. “Everyone just calls me ‘you’ or Holy Priest,” he added and shrugged his shoulders.

Laien and Yin were surprised at first, but they quickly began wondering if this boy’s lack of a name wasn’t somehow connected with his soon-to-be death the youth had mentioned.

“Are you ill or something?” Laien asked bluntly, going with the flow of his thoughts more so than with the flow of the conversation.

The question baffled the six-year-old at first, but he figured out what Laien meant just a few heartbeats later. “I’m not ill, but I will need to die in a week to save everyone,” he answered in a stunningly calm fashion, bewildering Laien and Yin and causing the air about the black-robed men to turn heavy. It couldn’t be more obvious that they considered this a sensitive subject.

“Save your questions for later, outsider children,” Uluan said sternly, almost habitually hitting the ground with the black, wooden staff he was carrying. “Any questions you have, our High Priest will answer them,” he explained amicably, though his tone implied clearly enough that he wouldn’t tolerate discussing this subject anymore until the right time.

“Why don’t you speak about something else for now?” Kalan suggested with a smile. “I’m sure he would also like to listen about the outside world. At this rate it will still be over an hour until we arrive so you can take your time,” he almost requested, showing how anxious he was in a very obvious way and as a result receiving a cold stare full of contempt from his father.

Laien frowned slightly. If it was him from a month ago, he would have probably gotten into an argument with those two men and proceeded to fight the conflict out. However, all those recent experiences served well to keep the haughtiness he had developed at the Red Dragon School in check. He couldn’t tell if it was right to step back here, but he decided to remain calm and wait to see this High Priest and have him explain everything.

Yin didn’t like what he was hearing either, but to his own surprise found it quite a bit harder to calm down when Laien was keeping his cool. Maybe it was just easier to be rational about something when someone whose emotions you could feel was being thoroughly emotional? Wondering about that caused Yin to feel a bit amused; he smiled to himself and like Laien, let the matter be for now.

“Is there anything specific you are curious about?” Laien asked the six-year-old. “Or should we just talk about random things?” he inquired, not really sure how he should go about talking about the ‘outside world’. He could talk about many things… but it was quite hard to choose where to begin.

“You must have some cool stories to tell, right? Tell me those!” the six-year-old said excitedly, his eyes lighting up in anticipation.

Laien laughed merrily. He and his friends back from his days in the Valius family had often chatted about grand battles and other epic stories from the history of the Starlight continent. He could also mention quite a few amazing events he had seen with his own eyes; he was pretty confident in the amount and quality of cool stories he had up his sleeve.

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“What a strange village,” Yin mentioned quietly, eyeing the hundreds of identical wooden buildings. For some reason, each and every one of them was painted black, or…? No, it wasn’t that. They weren’t painted black, they were made out of the same strange wood those staves were. What difference was there between normal wood and this one, Yin didn’t know; however, this ubiquitous black color was creating a very dark, ominous atmosphere in this village.

“It sure is pretty strange,” Laien agreed with a nod. “How come even wood the nearby trees seems to be blackish?” he asked while trying to make out colors in the prevailing darkness. The sunset was just about to begin, but the actual problem here were all those humongous trees blocking out the sun. He could very well imagine that even in the noon this village wouldn’t brighten up much compared to how it was now. It sure was a depressing place to live in, eh?

“You see, it’s because of the special dye in the ground,” the six-year-old said with a smile, but found it a little troublesome to explain properly when Laien and Yin gave him confused looks.

“We call it dye for simplicity,” Kalan took up the task of explaining in the six-year-old’s stead. “To be exact, the ground around our village contains huge amounts of this strange, harmless substance. We aren’t quite sure where it comes from, but it makes all the plants that grow nearby turn black in color. The black wood is more durable than a normal one and seems to never rot, so we use it to build things,” he summed up, aware of the expression his father must have had as he spoke.

“Enough talking,” Uluan said angrily enough to make Laien and Yin wonder if he was a perpetually angry type of person. “Leave your horses here, you can’t take them into the temple,” he ordered, then snorted when the two outsiders proved to be hesitant to dismount. “Do you think we are some kind of ferals who are going to eat them? We will put them in stables and have them wait for you to come back,” he asked impatiently, thinking that outsiders truly weren’t worthy enough to be dealt with seriously. They were all inferior to their people.

Beginning to regret they hadn’t left their horses with Ruan and the others, Laien and Yin reluctantly got off and handed over the reins to two black-robed men who approached them. They quietly wondered if those people knew they would have been trampled by those two War Horses had they not received the reins directly from them, but they apparently weren’t feral people, so they didn’t try to explain this part to them. It wasn’t their problem.

“The rest of you leave too,” Uluan ordered and soon, everyone but his son scattered. He nodded to himself, then began walking down the main street, heading to the center of the village.

When they reached the main plaza, which all in all was simply a large open space, Uluan stopped in a seemingly random fashion. He raised his staff and poured some Qi in it, then hit the ground with it. The entire village shook slightly as a large mass of earth and stone began moving. The illusions covering the entrance dissolved and massive stairs leading underground were revealed.

Laien was amazed to see this kind of structure work on what seemed to be large amounts of natural energy from the air. He had never heard or seen about such large-scale inventions; there at most were some special items created by spiritual masters and rune masters, but nothing so grand!

Yin, on the other hand, was even more shaken than Laien. Those objects… he didn’t think humans would have had means and knowledge necessary to replicate them, much less create them from scratch. He had thought this village not to be special, but perhaps he was very mistaken.

“Come, outsiders,” Uluan said proudly, pleased by the expressions the two boys were revealing. He led the way, stepping onto the stairs and beginning to descend deeper and deeper underground. He glanced over his shoulder after a moment, confirming that his son, the Holy Priest and the two outsiders were following. He nodded slightly and hit one of the stairs with his staff, causing the entrance behind them to close.

“When you see the High Priest,” he began saying when the rumbling of the earth and stone moving stopped. “You are not allowed to speak unasked. You will be respectful towards the High Priest and not talk back. If you are ordered to do or not to do something, you obey,” he stated simplistically, expecting the two to follow the rules as they promised. Yet, he couldn’t help clicking his tongue after noticing the kind of look Laien had in his eyes.

“If you don’t adhere to your promise, you will be thrown out immediately. Have I made this clear enough for you, outlanders?” he asked, though all he in response was Laien shrugging his shoulders and looking away from him. His face twitched dangerously and a vein bulged at his forehead, but in the end, he forced himself to calm down. It didn’t matter if those outsiders were disrespectful; if their presence here served to appease the Holy Priest and contributed to the result of the ritual, then swallowing a few bitter words instead of saying them aloud was well worth it.

“Where does this light come from?” Laien asked curiously. The stairs were about forty meters wide and the tunnel itself was just as high, if not higher. The stairs were twisting slightly and after it had gotten dark when the entrance had been shut, they were able to notice a dim, strange light coming from much further below. It was hard to say how far away the source of this light was, but it should have been at least two kilometers from the point there were at now.

“Wait until we get there, I will explain then,” Kalan said with a smile, wanting the kids to see where did this light come from before he would actually start explaining.

Laien raised an eyebrow but didn’t insist. They walked for about ten minutes, chatting with the six-year-old the whole time before finally getting close enough to be able to make out the separate sources of that light.

“Wow,” Laien and Yin exclaimed just about simultaneously. The walls of this tunnel were littered with shining roots which seemed to be spreading from much deeper underground. Just about half of the roots was giving off blue light, while the other was shining with red light. The light was fairly dim in the beginning, but the deeper the roots were the stronger it was. It glittered as if some kind of crystal-like liquid flowed inside the roots, thus creating a truly mesmerizing spectacle.

“They can see it clearly already?” Kalan wondered quietly. Himself he couldn’t yet tell the blue and red lights apart from each other, but those kids seemed to be able to see even the faraway roots.

“They are like veins of precious ore,” Laien said in amazement, recalling the underwater cave Rudford had once taken him to with all the illuminating algae inside it. “There’s energy inside them, but what is it? It’s not natural energy, it’s not Qi and not even spiritual energy,” he pondered silently when their group got close enough to enter the area where the roots were beginning to appear. He exchanged a curious look with Yin, knowing that his friend sensed the same thing and was also intrigued by it.

“These ‘veins’ are the roots of the Holy Tree,” Kalan finally began his explanation, watching the reactions of the two outsider youths with a smile. “You will be able to see the Holy Tree when we arrive in the temple after a few more kilometers,” he added, then seeing as no further questions were asked of him chose to stay quiet for the time being. He didn’t want to say something unnecessary and have his father get angry with him after all.

Some more time later, their group of five entered a gigantic cave that stretched good three kilometers in every direction. Right in front of them at the opposite sides of the path were two large, majestic sanctuaries made pure of white stone. Further down the path was a great lake, in the middle of which stood a humongous tree. The waters of the lake illuminated with a mixture of blue and red lights, just as did the roots covering all the walls of the cave.

“Guests from the outside?” a young man in white robes asked in a very soft, dreamy voice as he stepped out of the temple to the left of the entrance. “Bring them over, we shall talk in the light of the Holy Tree,” the young man declared amiably and gestured them to follow him.

Laien and Yin were once again surprised; this time by how gentle and benevolent this High Priest looked. His voice, his facial expression, the way he carried himself and the air he had about him… all of it was the epitome of righteousness and justice. Had they not been suspicious about this village from the very beginning, they would have certainly assumed that this silky-haired man was a trustworthy person.

After walking for a short while, their group of five arrived at the lake in the middle of which the Holy Tree was growing. They stopped just a few steps away from the calm, illuminating waters and turned their eyes to the High Priest, who was standing with his hands joined behind his back while gazing upon the great Holy Tree with a saddened look in his eyes.

“I’m the High Priest, Alan. I welcome you to the sacred temple, outlander youths,” the High Priest said gently, his voice containing a soothing vibe that was very pleasant to the ear. “Come closer, the two of you and the Holy Priest,” he waved his hand lightly, encouraging the three youths to come to his side. “How was your first impression of our village?” he asked Laien and Yin the moment they approached with the Holy Priest.

“It’s an amazing and beautiful place,” Laien answered, then smirked a little. “Apart from the fact that you want to kill a child ‘for everyone’s sake’,” he added provokingly. This High Priest, unlike those black-robed men, wasn’t hiding his cultivation base; he could very clearly tell the young man was at the first Realm of Heroes. He was just a martial master of the first rank, so unless he was merely the spiritual leader of the village and wasn’t the strongest one around… ugh. Thinking about it like this, maybe he shouldn’t have said what he had.

“You…!” Uluan howled through his gritted teeth, but his next words got drowned out by the laugh of the High Priest.

“If only the world was as simple as you are seeing it, outlander boy, “ the High Priest said with an understanding smile. He tilted his head slightly when Laien’s expression remained unconvinced, then turned his gaze to the trunk of the Holy Tree. “Look at the bark of the Holy Tree, just above the water level. If your eyes are good you will notice it, if your senses are acute, you might even vague sense it,” he said encouragingly, hoping to start the story only after the youths confirmed its existence with their own eyes.

He didn’t say anything while the boys focused their gazes on the front of the Holy Tree’s trunk. However, he sighed inwardly. “The seal is growing weaker by the day. There’s only one week left to the Eclipse though and this Holy Priest is exceptionally talented. Maybe we will be able to avoid any more sacrifices for the next twenty or thirty years,” he thought with great sadness but made sure none of his emotions showed on his face or in his eyes. Everything… was for the greater good.

As they focused, Laien and Yin instantly spotted a strange, slightly translucent part of the trunk. More importantly, however, there were two small crystal implanted into the bark there. One of them was glowing with blue light while the other one with red, just like all the roots of the Holy Tree. However, unlike with the roots, the crystals sometimes revealed brief glows of a different color than they should. The red-glowing crystal sometimes gleamed with bits of blue, while the blue-glowing crystal revealed a few traces of red from time to time.

From what Laien and Yin could tell, the strange energy filling the Holy Tree and its roots seemed to have a source in those crystals. Both of them could sense that much, but it was the limit of what Yin could tell. Laien on the other hand… the more he started at the blue-glowing crystal, the more drawn in by it he felt. It was as if the world around him was becoming less and less real, as if all thoughts of his own no longer mattered. He simply wanted to reach out and touch this crystal with his hand… and so he did. He stepped forward and without appearing alarmed, fell into the clear and deep waters of the lake.

The moment his body touched the water and submerged into it, the whole lake appeared to have awakened. The light it was giving off became considerably stronger to the point it was nearly blinding to look at; the ancient energy in the Holy Trees and its roots stirred, as if it was extremely excited.

A second later the trunk of the Holy Tree cracked and a large part of its bark fell into the water, revealing that the two little crystals were, in fact, part of one huge, three meters wide crystal that glowed with blue light from one of its haves and with red light from the other. Yet, subsequently, something unimaginable happened. The red light suddenly grew weaker, then died down completely as the whole cave was filled with nothing but a mass of strong, deep-blue light. The roots of the Holy Tree and the waters of the lake itself changed a second later, causing everything to be bathed in azure colors.

“High Priest!” Kalan shouted, frightened by the unforeseen development. Why did the crystal begin acting up when that boy fell into the lake? Was the Divine Seal about to break?! Would those two demons be released to lay waste to the world as they pleased?!

At the same time, Uluan strengthened the grip of his hand on the black staff. He turned to look at the Holy Priest, who seemed unaware of his gaze and was just about to take a swing when the High Priest raised his hand to stop him.

“The seal hasn’t been broken. Step down, Uluan,” the High Priest ordered, trying to keep his calm at least on the surface. His mind, however, was in a state of complete chaos as he rejoiced over what he was seeing. “The Divine Seal is resonating so strongly with that outlander boy! How great of an opportunity that is!” The High couldn’t help but smile at the thought. Perhaps the cursed fate of their clan could be averted! If the seal could be completed, then they would be able to leave! They would once again be free! Their bloodline would no longer be held down by the power of the curse!

The six-year-old was just as alarmed by the ongoing events as Kalan or Uluan, but he was too nervous to think clearly or attempt to do anything. He had never faced anything like this in his life; in fact, he had experienced little to nothing compared to an average six-year-old. He was simply incapable of taking an action even though he really wanted to do something to help Laien.

As for Yin… he was surprisingly calm. He crouched by the waters of the lake, watching how Laien was slowly rising up from the depth of about two meters. “He has his eyes closed and isn’t moving at all. He is relaxed and… it feels like he is meditating? Did he have a flash of sudden insight?” he realized, then smiled merrily. He no longer hesitated and jumped into the lake, dove in and gently grabbed ahold of Laien’s body. He brought him to the surface, then with some effort managed to place him on the ground without making any sharp movements.