Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 30. Greater Good, Lesser Evil.

“It looks like you like him a lot,” the six-year-old said with a somewhat wry, playful smile. He could clearly tell how much Yin liked Laien from the way he spoke about him; to be honest, it was making him very jealous that the two of them were such good friends and he had no peers his age at all. “Are you sure you aren’t a girl, after all, big brother Yin? You two would make a nice couple,” he inquired daringly, getting a bit ahead of himself as he had simply said what came to his mind to stop thinking about unpleasant things.

“I’m telling you I’m not a girl,” Yin said with a helpless laugh. This was the fourth time since he began telling him about Laien that he asked this question. “You know that girls don’t have weenies, right?” he asked with a smirk, then pulled his pants down just enough for the boy to see what was in them. After a second or two he pulled them back and gave the six-year-old a questioning look; was this enough to convince him?

“You really are a boy, big brother Yin,” the six-year-old admitted, some disbelief still sounding in his voice. Could a boy this good-looking really exist? Yin was much prettier than any of the girls in the village, but he really was like him down there and not like Marie, so he needed to be a boy.

“Is it something to be so disappointed about?” Yin asked and sighed a little, then blushed a little as he thought back to the talk about ‘partners’ he had had with Laien. It was like this kid said a moment ago; if he was a girl then he and Laien would make a nice couple. They could even have children… but thinking about something so strange was… well, strange.

“Who knows?” the six-year-old replied honestly. “Marie said it’s harder for boys and girls to be just friends,” he mentioned without really understanding what Marie had meant, but he simply didn’t want Yin to get sad because of how he acted in their talk.

“Yeah, I think I know what she was speaking about,” Yin said with a chuckle. From what he had seen of Siana’s and Nila’s behaviors he could tell dealing with girls wasn’t simple. In the end, maybe it was better that he and Laien were both boys, thanks to that they had much less to worry about.

“You do?” the six-year-old asked, but didn’t appear to be overly interested in this subject. He didn’t care about things like boyfriends and girlfriends, or the very least not when they involved his person. He wouldn’t grow up old enough to be concerned with things like family anyway, so he didn’t want to think about it too much either.

“Mm.” Yin nodded lightly. “You want to talk about that or about something else?” he asked to make sure, noticing how this time the six-year-old didn’t shower him with questions right off the bat.

“Nah, let’s talk about something else,” the six-year-old replied quickly. “I promised to teach you our Aura Manipulation Art, want me to explain it to you?” he offered, seeing no problem in what he was doing. Uluan said it would be fine to teach the art to Laien and Yin too, so it should be all right.

“Weren’t we supposed to eat soon?” Yin asked with a laugh. He didn’t dislike the idea of learning the art earlier, but should they be doing that right now?

“It won’t take long, just a few minutes,” the six-year-old said lightheartedly. He had mastered the Aura Manipulation Art in mere moments when he was still three years old. He was sure it wouldn’t take Yin much longer, in fact, he could very well master it faster than he had

“If it’s so simple then why not,” Yin agreed, wondering if the six-year-old wasn’t going to bring out some technique scrolls. It couldn’t be that simple for it to only require a verbal explanation… or could it?

“You can take make your aura go out of your body naturally, right?” the six-year-old asked, thus startling Yin a little.

Controlling aura wasn’t something so simple; Yin himself was from a race of magical beasts and had awakened his battle sense at the age of four, subsequently learning how to use his aura when he was five… but normal marital practitioners usually couldn’t actively employ their aura until late stages of the mortal realm, if not until they reached the Realm of Heroes. Spiritual practitioners had it easier, but it still couldn’t justify saying it was natural for them.

Regardless, Yin nodded and waited for the six-year-old to continue his explanation.

“It’s simple then. Instead of making your aura come out in all directions, try making it come out only from your hand. Only a little of it, just to cover a few centimeters,” the six-year-old urged Yin on, following the exact same steps the High Priest took when teaching him.

“Just from my hand?” Yin thought in surprise. He had never heard about any methods of making your aura come out only from one part of your body, much less about any methods of controlling it. He was from the Forbidden Lands and he had never heard about such an idea, yet this kid was telling him to just ‘try doing it’? Was it really so simple but somehow no one had tried doing so before?

“I guess I can try,” he decided casually, without expecting much. He closed his eyes and focused on the sensation accompanying the release of his aura, then attempted to suppress it throughout his whole body and only let it out from his right hand, and to his surprise actually succeeded without too much effort. “I did it,” he uttered involuntarily and opened his eyes. Was this supposed to be so easy just like this boy was saying?

“Then try to cover your whole body with a very, very thin layer of aura now,” the six-year-old said merrily, happy to see Yin was doing well with leaning. He was a bit worried that outsiders might be less compatible with their Aura Manipulation Art, but it seemed like he had worried needlessly.

Yin closed his eyes once again and focused for a bit. He released his aura, then began withdrawing it until almost none of it was left. When he could only sense bits of his own clothes and the part of his back that was resting against Laien’s and decided it was thin enough. He glanced at the six-year-old, awaiting further instructions.

“Now for the presence hiding part,” the six-year-old said eagerly. “You are already at eighth mortal realm, so it should be easier for you than me. Just take control of your aura and imitate the way your Qi flows through your body. It will cause your presence to leak less and if you master it perfectly, it should disappear completely almost completely, just like mine did,” he explained all the while smiling cheekily. Big brother Yin was as surprised as he hoped he would be.

“How come you know how strong I am?” Yin asked with a slight frown. Did this kid probe him with his aura? And he didn’t notice it at all?

“Do what I told you first, I will show you after that,” the six-year-old responded with a laugh.

“Fine,” Yin agreed a bit unhappily. He spent about half a minute trying to set his inner aura into a state of perpetual circulation and managed to do it just fine, though more than half of this time was spent on calming his thoughts down in order to enter a proper meditative state. He was about to open his eyes and repeat his question, but just then he noticed a thumb-sized strand of aura reaching into his body from outside. The strand then suddenly shrank so much it wasn’t much thicker than a single hair, but with some effort, he could still tell it was there.

“So that’s how it works?” Yin wondered, with some effort imitating what the six-year-old did and sending out just a single, minuscule strand of aura from his body. He probed the kid with it and to his strong shock, discovered that the six-year-old was already at the late stages of the second mortal realm. This kind of martial talent would place him at the very top of the continent as long as he was provided with enough powerful techniques and a suitably incredible martial art!

“It’s inconvenient to scout with it though. What if…” Yin mused, this time making use of the essence of the Aspect of Awareness to aid himself.

The six-year-old was about to praise Yin for mastering the Aura Manipulation Art so quickly, when he sensed a few dozen strands of aura washing over and sliding through his body. His eyes snapped open; this way of controlling one’s aura… he had tried to do similar things, but he always failed! Was Yin even more talented in controlling his aura than he was?

“Is there also a way to hide your aura when someone is actively looking for it?” Yin asked aloud, but he was so focused on what he was doing that he didn’t even wait for a response. “I assume you cover your body with that thin layer and allow the other aura to naturally wash over it? If someone isn’t particularly skilled in using his aura then all he will see is a blur that doesn’t resemble a human at all. But then what about another aura user? Is there a way to stop a small strand of aura from detecting you?” he wondered, speaking all of his thoughts as they came.

“There is a way,” the six-year-old said in a superficially calm voice. “You can stop another person’s aura from entering with your own aura if you aren’t much weaker than that person is. The problem is that stopping it from entering your body will quite easily tell him where you are,” he explained once again, happy that he had pestered the high Priest with questions so much he had gotten a bit angry with him back them.

“If a whole, normal aura can be made to wash over you…” Yin began saying, an idea having sprung in his mind. “Then won’t covering the incoming strand of aura with your own as it enters your body, just enough to suppress it but not enough to cause it to dissipate, would be enough?” he asked rhetorically, simply putting an idea forward and not expecting the six-year-old to answer it.

“Um, I can try to probe you if you want?” the six-year-old suggested. “I don’t think it’s possible to do it though. It seems way too hard,” he added unsurely. However, considering Yin’s aptitude for controlling aura and the things he did before with those dozens, if not hundreds of strands, maybe it was doable after all.

“Let’s try,” Yin requested, after what he and the six-year-old shut their eyes. They made the first attempt very carefully, without hurrying. The strand approached slowly and didn’t move in an unpredictable manner and yet, Yin still failed to fool the six-year-old’s senses. They attempted the same thing about ten more times, but in the end gave up on trying. It was too hard to do in the end; they couldn’t accomplish it while working together, so then what would they do when the other person wasn’t cooperating and very much wanted to find whoever was hiding nearby?

“You are amazing, big brother Yin. You can use aura better than me after fifteen minutes of training,” the six-year-old said cheerfully, without even a hint of jealousy in his voice.

“It will be really useful,” Yin acknowledged the compliment with a nod. From what he could tell, the more he would practice circulating his inner aura the more established the inner paths would become and the less of his aura would leak out. He wouldn’t need to concentrate to hide his presence and while being careful, normal aura users wouldn’t be able to detect him well. This kind of benefit was quite great; he couldn’t wait until he would teach Laien how to do the same.

“I’m glad,” the six-year-old said happily. He briefly wondered what he should bring up next so they could continue talking, though before he decided he spotted Marie walking towards them. By the looks of it, it was time for dinner. He was already quite hungry so the timing couldn’t be better.

“Were you having fun chatting?” Marie inquired in a lovely tone. “I assume you won’t be leaving this place? The others changed their minds about eating together, so it will be only us three,” she said with a beautiful, almost alluring smile and shifted her gaze between the Holy Priest and his new friend, Yin if she remembered correctly. She was acting perfectly calm, but the fact that there was no amazement or awe in that young boy’s eyes as he looked at her did hurt her pride a little. Was Yin not interested in older women? If so, then she would bring some of the girls from the village. Hopefully one of them would be to his liking; she would rather not resort to using drugs as Uluan suggested.

“Yeah, it was fun,” the six-year-old replied and smiled back at his caretaker. “What did you make for us?” he asked, his stomach already growling quietly.

“Oh, I’m sure both of you will find something to your liking,” Marie said amiably and took out a fair amount of dishes from her interspatial ring.

Yin also smiled, not sensing any malicious intent from this golden-haired woman. The thought of food being spiked crossed his mind, but with his constitution, he was immune to all but the rarest and most powerful of drugs and poisons, about which he had learned at his grandfather’s place. It would be a different matter if Laien was also eating and he happened not to know one of the herbs or potions those people used, but as long as it was only him there shouldn’t be any problems.

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Kalan frowned, not too happy with what he was seeing. He used many hours to plan his conversation with Yin, went to sleep and revised his plans again. It was late morning now and he planned to go and gave this talk with the kid, but after leaving the sanctuary he saw the Holy Priest sleeping on a fur beside the two mediating outsiders.

“I wanted to talk to him alone… but having the Holy Priest there might actually benefit me,” Kalan assumed after a moment of thinking the matter through. He took a deep breath, pushed his emotions and morals deep beneath his outer level of consciousness and suppressed them with a casual approach, forcing himself to almost forget how much he disliked what he was doing. He began walking forward, not too fast and not too slow, making sure the mask he put on stuck properly.

“What do you want?” Yin opened his eyes and asked the moment Kalan approached. At the same time, he circulated the aura inside his body and sent out a strand of it to probe Kalan. The man shouldn’t know that he learned how to use the Aura Manipulation Art so fast, so he probably wouldn’t be on guard, and judging by his lack of reaction, he either was a really good actor or didn’t notice anything.

“Just like he said, Kalan is at the seventh mortal realm. Uluan should be at the peak of the ninth and the only martial master in the village should be that High Priest,” Yin thought to himself. He was a lot calmer than yesterday when they were only arriving at this hidden village. He now knew almost for sure that those people weren’t strong enough to threaten him or Laien; the only thing that concerned him was this strange bewildering formation and what it was capable of. Thus, he still couldn’t afford to relax completely and act as he pleased.

The best course of action would be to make sure no one is there to control the core of this formation, which apparently was in the building here, the one the High Priest lived in. However, that was only if those people refused to let him and Laien go. Unless forced to, he wouldn’t take the chances to fight against this ancient formation.

“I wanted to talk with you about the incident from yesterday,” Kalan answered straightforwardly, without beating around the bush.

“Yes, what about it?” Yin asked rather coldly. He looked to the side, at the six-year-old who was woken up by their quiet chatting. The kid was probably used to sleeping in absolute silence, it wasn’t strange for any slightest noise to wake him up.

“I will be honest with you,” Kalan said and smiled amiably. He had come to the conclusion that playing games with Yin wouldn’t result in anything good; the kid appeared to be a straightforward type, so getting straight to the point should work the best. “Your friend is extremely compatible with the Divine Seal of ours. With his help we could complete the sealing process for good; there would no longer be any need for sacrifices and the curse of the demons would be cut off from us too. We would be free, all of us would be free,” he orated exactly as planned, with the same gestures and the same facial expression he wanted to show, but towards the end, he understood he had screwed up somewhere. As he spoke, the look in this green-haired boy’s eyes had gradually turned colder and colder.

Yin closed his eyes for a second, giving his best to calm down. The six-year-old had told him about the ritual, the Divine Seal and the demons from ten millennia ago and although the six-year-old wasn’t clear on the details, his story was more than enough to draw conclusions from. Right now he really wanted to tell this ‘Kalan’ or whatever what he was thinking of him, but he bit his tongue. As long as Laien was in the middle of making his breakthrough he couldn’t risk any disruptions.

“And if that was risk-free, you would have told me yesterday, not after this whole time,” Yin stated calmly, then snorted and smiled a little. Was this man expecting him to be stupid? To begin with, he could tell Kalan reeked of malicious intent the instant he approached him; very much unlike his yesterday self. There was no way he would trust anything a person like him said.

“As I said, your friend is very compatible with the Divine Seal,” Kalan repeated without showing any anxiety or nervousness, but little did he know that all his highly refined acting was causing Yin to trust him less and less; if that was even possible. “In standard cases, all we can do is to strengthen the seal at the cost of the life of one of our own. However, in your friend’s case, we will only need some of his blood for the ritual. We are willing to compensate you for the help to the extent of our ability, so it shouldn’t be a bad deal for you at all,” he assured, certain they had a few things those two boys from the outside would greatly desire.

“Compensate us? With what?” Yin asked, guessing that cutting the conversation short so quickly would be a bad idea. He needed to at least pretend he was interested in the bait that was thrown at him, even if he didn’t intend on taking it.

“For example with the scrolls of the Aura Manipulation Art you wanted,” Kalan pointed out, beginning with the most obvious thing.

“Big brother Yin already learned this art,” the six-year-old spoke up. He didn’t want to get involved in what they were talking about before since Yin promised him that if possible, then after Laien woke up they would help him. By all means, he should have trusted people he knew ever since he could remember, but somehow he felt that he could trust Yin more. At the very least, he felt that Yin was being honest with him; he never promised to save him, he only promised to try. That was already more than anyone else had done for him.

“What are you speaking about?” Kalan shook his head, his forehead furrowed in confusion. It was nigh impossible for any outsider to learn their Aura Manipulation Art, to begin with, to do so without a scroll like this Holy Priest did? Absolutely impossible.

“I explained to big brother Yin how the art works yesterday. He learned very quickly; quicker than I did. He is better at using it too,” the six-year-old explained while looked upon by Kalan and Yin, the former of the two thinking the whole thing was a joke and the latter keeping his calm. Marie had learned he mastered the Aura Manipulation Art already, so there was no point keeping it a secret. The news would leak out sooner or later even if he asked the six-year-old to keep it to himself.

“It’s up to you if you don’t believe him,” Yin said and shrugged his shoulders. “We aren’t interested in those scrolls anymore. To begin with, it was what we were promised for coming here, not for helping you do anything so risky,” he said clearly, playing along with Kalan’s game. There should be something else the village could offer them; not like they would accept it anyway.

“At least I hope we won’t accept it,” Yin thought to himself. “Laien can be so emotional about those things. I bet he will want to help this kid no matter what,” he assumed helplessly. Yet, there was no point worrying about that when he couldn’t do anything to change Laien’s mind. He could only hope Laien wouldn’t act so recklessly anymore after what had happened in the Iron Fort.

“We have some items preserved from the ancient times,” Kalan mentioned, giving the previous matter a rest. The boys were obviously kidding with him; there was no way Yin could have learned their secret art from a mere oral explanation. “There are also formation techniques, secrets of runic magic, many precious Qi Manipulating Arts…” he brought up one after another, refusing to believe two young masters from the outside would refuse to help a just cause while being generously compensated for doing it.

Yin stayed silent for two dozens of seconds, making it look like he was considering the proposition. He then smiled at Kalan, but contrary to his expectations said rather in a rather uncaring tone.

“I’m sorry, but Laien needs to wake up first. Then we can talk.”

Despite knowing a possibility like this existed, Kalan barely stopped the expression on his face from turning ugly. As long as that kid woke up in less than six days he would have another chance to talk it out. However, it would be much better if he had already managed to convince Yin beforehand; there was also the matter of acquiring those boys’ genes, what would be best done with their cooperation.

“If worst comes to worst, we can always disregard that boy’s breakthrough, capture both of them, drug them and then kill the compatible one off when the time comes,” the thought passed Kalan’s mind, but the very next second a shiver ran down his spine. He hurriedly stepped back, his jaw and legs trembling as he started at the green-haired youth before him; if this terrifying surge of killing intent had indeed come from him, then they would need to tread carefully while capturing him and his friend.