Fates Parallel Chapter 63 - Observation

The run to the mountain was uneventful, and they made good time, arriving at the base of the mountain before noon. They slowed to a stop, meeting up with the Qin group who had run ahead, and was waiting for them. Zheng Long’s expression was smug as he raised a hand to greet them.

“Glad you could finally join us!”

Hayakawa ignored the jab and nodded her own greeting.

“That’s an interesting technique. I think it shares some overlap with my family’s martial arts. We’ll be moving a bit slower from this point on, the mountain itself still has plenty of dangers. Will you be following us to the peak, or splitting off now?”

Zheng Long shrugged and glanced back at the rest of his group.

“What do you think, Han? You’re the one most invested in the search.”

At first Lee Jia was surprised he was being so open, but she quickly realized that they were using Han Yu’s alchemy as an excuse to search the mountain—ostensibly for alchemical materials.

Han Yu stroked his chin for a moment and hummed thoughtfully.

“Hmm, the peak is where the spiritual energy will be strongest. A top-down approach should yield the best results, I think.”

Zheng Long nodded, before turning back to Hayakawa.

“There you have it. I suppose we will join you on the trip to the peak.”

“Very well. What about you, Miss Lee?”

Lee Jia looked up with a start when she was addressed suddenly.

“Me?”

She blushed as everyone from all three groups turned their attention to her. Apparently she’d been assumed as the de facto leader of the Goryeon group without her realization. Strictly speaking, Hayakawa didn’t really have to ask, though they had agreed that Lee Jia would keep most of her freedom while they still attended the academy.

“S-sorry, I guess we’ll join you for training at the peak first.”

Not that Jia wasn’t interested in exploring the mountain herself—she was sure that Dae would be over the moon to gather some alchemical reagents—but it would be a waste not to take advantage of such a great training location, even if her cultivation was currently stunted. Proximity to Hayakawa’s group would also give them relative safety from whatever designs the Qin group had against them, if any.

Hayakawa took no note of Lee Jia’s hesitation, simply nodding curtly.

“Fine, we’ll ascend the mountain as a group, then. Since we’ve already been up there, you can follow our lead.”

Zheng Long raised a hand, but spoke without actually waiting for anyone to acknowledge him.

“Say, I have a proposal—since we’re clearly split into distinct groups, why don’t we trade off on fighting any beasts that show up? It’ll be a chance to test our ability to handle ourselves when we split up, but without the danger, since the others can swoop in to rescue a failed attempt.”

Lee Jia frowned. That sounded to her like a blatant attempt to see what the other groups were capable of in a fight, but at the same time she kind of wanted to see Zheng Long’s group fight as well. Hayakawa didn’t seem bothered by the suggestion, and simply nodded.

“Sure. Zheng Long, since it was your idea, your group can go first, then Miss Lee’s. We’ve already proven ourselves, so my group will go last.”

One of the girls from Yamato that Lee Jia didn’t know raised her hand and interjected.

“Actually, Lady Hayakawa, we’d like a chance to practice our new techniques in the field as a team. Would it be alright if our group fought separately?”

Lee Jia saw the other students she didn’t know nodding their heads in agreement, and Hayakawa shrugged.

“Alright, Minami, your group can go after Miss Lee’s, then.”

Minami pumped a fist excitedly, then shot Lee Jia a grin for some reason. What was that about? Well, at least Lee Jia knew one of their names, now. With all that sorted out, the group finally began their ascent.

---

They proceeded up the mountain in relative silence. Nobody forgot that there had been casualties during the winter expedition, and so they remained vigilant for any threats. Zheng Long seemed rather at ease, but at least picked up on the mood enough to avoid idle chatter.

The first magical beasts they encountered were a small herd of goats with stoney-looking scales in place of fur. They had been grazing, but quickly adopted an aggressive posture as soon as the group approached. Lee Jia looked around, but saw only rocks—though some of them seemed distinctly...chewed on.

“Were they eating the rocks?”

Dae glanced at Jia and adjusted his glasses.

“Ah, yes, I think they were, hehe. Those would be Stonetouched Rams—they’ll eat anything, but generally the thing that’s most abundant in their habitat is—well, stone. Strictly speaking, it’s possible for them to adapt to other elements, but it’s quite rare to find them outside of mountainous climates.”

Zheng Long scoffed as he stepped forward.

“I don’t particularly care what they are, what they eat, or where to find them. What grade are they?”

Dae nodded—that was a common attitude among cultivators of all disciplines. Magical beasts were little more than a source of cores and materials to gather.

“Around the second stage, on average, though as you can see they tend to appear in rather high numbers.”

Indeed, there were nearly a dozen of the creatures, all pawing the ground and brandishing their horns threateningly. Zheng Long sighed and shook his head.

“Hardly worth the effort. Yue, you stay back, your talents are no good for this fight. Xin and Han will support Guan and me.”

Most of the group backed off as Zheng Long began throwing orders out to his party and they got into formation. As Zheng Long stepped forward, he burst into brilliant flames that strongly resembled Yan Zhihao’s technique. Lee Jia was curious how he planned to hold back so many creatures with just the two of them.

The terrain was relatively open, and the slopes hadn’t yet gotten steep enough to make the footing difficult. As Zheng and Guan advanced, there was plenty of space to pass around or between them.

Seeing the aggressive actions from the Qin students, the goats charged at the group as one. Zheng Long held out one hand and produced a shield of flame, before throwing it towards some of the charging goats. It expanded as it flew, until it formed a wall of flame to block the charging creatures.

The stone-skinned goats attempted to charge fearlessly through the wall of flame, but as they reached it, Zheng Long threw a hand down and Lee Jia sensed a pulse of power radiate out from him, creating a field of increased gravity concentrated on the wall of fire. The goats faltered as they tried to cross it, falling to their knees and becoming trapped within the flames.

On Guan Yi’s side, he took a more direct approach—creating a cloud of poisonous miasma that the goats instinctively avoided, and he physically blocked the ones that had been herded around it. Within the first few moments of the fight, he had met their charge head-on and beheaded two of them with a single swipe of his formidable polearm each.

One of the goats managed to slip between the two of them, but before it could charge past them, Xin and Han worked together to lock it down with their own versions of the gravity field technique—Domain of the Earthen Realm, from Jia’s manuals. Lee Jia could see why it was such a commonly practiced technique among cultivators, the utility of restricting an opponent’s movements like that couldn’t be understated.

Zheng Long took advantage of the opening to hurl a spear of fire that lanced straight through the creature’s head as if it were a physical object. The fire quickly disappeared, but the hole in the goat’s head was very real as it dropped lifelessly to the ground.

Lee Jia tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Zheng Long seemed to produce weapons made of flame and then infuse them with metal qi using the Earth Rending Sword Art. Was that even possible? She couldn’t imagine the kind of mastery required to combine techniques in such a way.

The goats trapped in the fire soon perished, and the remaining half-dozen or so were herded together and summarily slaughtered by Guan and Zheng’s combined efforts. In the end, Han Yu and Xin Wei barely even participated in the fight.

Zheng Long stretched his arms lazily as he returned to the group.

“How droll. There was hardly even any sport in that. I’ve no interest in second grade cores, so feel free to distribute them however you like.”

He left the others to gather the cores, and Hayakawa raised an eyebrow at him.

“Is gravity manipulation really so ubiquitous among Qin’s cultivators? It’s considered to be quite exotic in Yamato—only my family trains in it extensively.”

Zheng Long shrugged.

“It’s less common than you might expect from our group. The Domain of the Earthen Realm is a core technique of my sect that just so happens to overlap with the Xin family’s Spiritual Flowing Purewater style. I don’t believe Sir Guan is trained in it, is that right?”

Guan Yi glanced back and nodded.

“That is correct. My sect focuses primarily on direct attacking techniques and martial mastery.”

It only took a few moments for the others to harvest the cores, leaving the rest of the remains to decay. They would likely be consumed by other magical beasts within a few days, since their bodies were rich with ki. Lee Jia had even tried some cooked magical beasts herself, but they didn’t taste as good as regular meat and the ki didn’t really do much for her.

Soon, they were once again ascending the mountain, and Lee Jia was left to wonder what kind of challenge her group would have to face.

---

Lee Jia’s question was soon answered when the group came across a pair of elementals. They nearly missed them, the way they blended into the mountainous terrain, but there was no mistaking the intense auras of earth and stone mana that the two creatures exuded. The elementals seemed content to simply continue pretending to be normal lumps of dirt and stone, but the group had to pass them by, and it would be dangerous to ignore them.

She was reminded that elementals were not the mindless creatures that magical beasts were—they possessed an alien sort of intelligence that lacked any kind of empathy. The pathway here was narrow, with steep slopes and treacherous cliffs around them, and most likely the elementals had intentionally set a trap. When it was clear that the trap had been spotted, the elementals rearranged themselves into vaguely humanoid shapes to block the way.

Jia considered her strategy for a moment. It was clear that they wouldn’t be able to engage directly with more than two at a time, due to the narrow path, which meant that she had to choose her front-line carefully. In the past, it had been her, Rika, and Guan who had handled front-line fighting—they no longer had Guan Yi, but Eui’s control had improved dramatically, and she was no longer the glass cannon she used to be.

Eui was an obvious choice—she was already the heaviest hitter in the group, and her destruction-element attacks would cut through stone just as easily as flesh. So it was between her and Rika, but neither was ideal. Her own lightning-element attacks were all but useless against the creatures, and her fighting style relied on large, erratic movements—hardly ideal for a narrow cliff. Rika, on the other hand, used force-element attacks and distractions, but also had a much tighter style of hand-to-hand combat.

In the end, it was Jia’s corrosive aura that broke the tie—while it would have been potentially useful in the fight, it was also indiscriminate, and the close quarters would have meant catching Eui in its effect.

Thanks to her mana-enhanced mind, she thought through all of that in only a second or two and quickly called out her decisions.

“Eui, take the stone one, Rika go for the earth elemental. Eunae, does your technique work on elementals?”

Eunae shook her head.

“They don’t have eyes.”

“Then you can help Dae provide spell support. I’ll be on standby to switch off with Eui or Rika if they need to regroup.”

It felt wrong to order others into a fight while she held herself back, but nobody complained as they fell into formation. Jia was a little bit worried, having only one person covering each elemental, but these were nowhere close to the xiantian fire elemental that they had faced last winter, and their own techniques had all come a long way since then.

Rika’s doppelganger was much sharper now, and had been joined by a second. Without her domain, Jia would have no way to tell which was the real one, and she knew from experience that it hardly mattered, as each one could strike with as much force as the original.

For Eui’s part, she had always had a better talent for martial arts than Jia did, but her style focused on standing one’s ground and resisting with brute force—which had once been incongruous with the fragility that her element gave her. Now that she could wield her destruction-aligned ki without fear of backlash, the style’s true strength became evident.

While Rika surrounded the earth elemental and harassed it from three angles, Eui simply stood toe-to-toe with the larger stone elemental. She cut a rather comical figure standing up to the stone creature twice her size with nothing but a pair of knives, but Jia knew just how much of a force she was to be reckoned with.

As the stone elemental swung a rocky fist down at Eui, she sidestepped it and slashed out with one of her knives at the same time. The fist was severed instantly, and the stone elemental seemed taken aback—as much as it could, without a face—as it tried and failed to reassemble the appendage from the surrounding rock.

Taking advantage of its confusion, Eui flung one of her knives into its ‘head’ and lunged forward to sweep its leg out with a kick. The elemental clearly sensed the danger in the projectile through whatever sort of mana sense it used to perceive the world and concentrated its efforts on avoiding it. That turned out to be a mistake as Eui’s ki-empowered kick completely destroyed the elemental’s leg, causing it to topple over helplessly.

Within moments, Eui tore the elemental apart, leaving nothing but its core intact. Rika had not managed to disassemble her opponent quite so quickly or efficiently, but she had managed to hold it down without much problem, especially since Rika’s doppelgangers and the support from Dae and Eunae made it a five on one fight. Once Eui dismantled her opponent and joined their fight, it was over in seconds.

It was—anticlimactic. It was hard to gauge the strength of elementals, but she was reasonably certain they had been stage three, judging from the cores they recovered. They had outnumbered them, but Jia had expected much more from what were supposed to be extremely dangerous creatures.

Apparently Zheng Long agreed as he scoffed and shook his head.

“I’m not sure we should even count that one. That was even worse than what we got. Two lousy elementals? They hardly even fought back!”

Han Yu picked up on the mockery and looked down his nose at the group with a scornful gaze.

“Miss Lee, I thought you were supposed to be the leader of your group, why hide behind others? Are your own skills really so lacking?”

Lee Jia shook her head and didn’t allow the insults to get to her.

“If you think you know the abilities of my friends and how best to apply them better than I do, I’m happy to hear your recommendations.”

Xin snickered as Han Yu simply turned away and scoffed without giving any further response.

“You should be careful with that one, Senior Han. Her tongue cuts as fiercely as her claws.”

Lee Jia rolled her eyes and glared at Xin Wei.

“You only think that, Xin, because I answer your barbs in kind. I’d be perfectly civil if you ever bothered to offer me the same courtesy.”

“Hahaha! You see what I mean? She’s a delight to banter with, isn’t that right, Stoneface?”

Guan glanced down at Xin before turning to Han Yu and nodding curtly.

“Indeed. Xin seems to very much enjoy repeatedly losing battles of wits with Miss Lee.”

“That’s not what I—ugh, I hate you!”

Jia tried to suppress a giggle as Han Yu looked between the pair with utter bewilderment, obviously not used to their unusual dynamic. Zheng Long chuckled lightly and patted Han Yu on the shoulder.

“Hah! You’d better pick your battles more carefully if even our friend Xin here has difficulties. I concede your point, Miss Lee. The battle was well fought, and perhaps its smooth execution can be attributed to your superior strategy. I retract my earlier objections.”

Lee Jia eyed Zheng Long suspiciously. She didn’t understand him at all. He was quick to cast shade, but just as quick to give face if challenged. He always carried an air of cool confidence, and even when he gave ground it felt as though she was losing something in the process. She might have been learning to play the Qin’s social games—as much as she hated them—but Zheng Long seemed to be playing under a completely different set of rules.

Hayakawa cleared her throat to draw attention.

“Ahem! If we’re finished bickering, I think it’s time to move on.”

Zheng Long bowed slightly and extended a hand toward the open path ahead.

“Of course, Miss! Lead on, we’re right behind you.”

As the group continued their trek up the mountain, Jia tried to puzzle out Zheng Long’s motivations. He had an air of superiority that made him seem overconfident, but Lee Jia worried that it was a false image. Perhaps because of her own recent self-reflection on the nature of her own public mask, she was more sensitive to those who kept their true selves hidden behind the veneer that they projected.

She was certain that there was more to Zheng Long than met the eye. She just hoped she could figure out what it was before it was too late.