Critical: Ages Below Critical Chapter 5.1

Chapter 5: Golden Soul Mist (Part 1)


 

The silence of the heavens and earth is a silence that only occurs after chaos.

In the entire vast valley,

The violent stench of blood cannot be waved off.

The blood plasma that has splattered around,

Coats the trees, thistles and thorns, rocks,

Painting them a horrifying red.

As if a month’s worth of scarlet has poured from the skies,

Everything is dampened in red.

 

 

[West of Aslan Empire – Port city of Rennes]

From the moment he has woken up in the morning, Qi Ling has been moving forward alongside Yin Chen; Yin Chen looks light and airy, as carefree as taking a stroll when in reality, his strength is like a gust of wind and Qi Ling had to use all his strength in order to catch up to him. Gradually, they left the forest outside of Fauser behind, Yin Chen heads west with Qi Ling. At first Qi Ling was only slightly dubious, but he thought that Yin Chen might know a shortcut hence he did not say much. However, when a blinding white port city appears before his eyes, Qi Ling can no longer hold it in: “Yin Chen, aren’t we heading to the imperial capital Gelanerte? Shouldn’t Gelanerte be in the northern inlands? Why did we come to this port city?” He says as he lifts his head and exclaims about how impressive the white ma.s.s of architecture are in Rennes while rus.h.i.+ng after Yin Chen.
 

“I brought you here so that you can get the soul weapon that belongs you to.” Yin Chen continues moving forward without looking back.

“Soul weapon? What’s that?” Qi Ling is confused again. He sighs; he will never be able to understand this world of soul bending. Just as he understands one thing, there will be something new in the blink of an eye. He just found out his own soul beast yesterday, and great, here comes a soul weapon. Maybe tomorrow there will be soul robes, soul shoes, soul belts……

“It’s a weapon that belongs to you only. A soul weapon is not a typical weapon, it is only produced in the ‘Grave of the Souls’.”

“Can I please ask what this Grave of the Souls is……” Qi Ling thinks his brain is about to explode from the lack of oxygen.

“The Grave of the Souls is a deep sea cave in the depths of the sea of Rennes. This gigantic cavern exists since the ancient times, just like the existence of the Silver Priests in the imperial capital Gelanerte, no one knows when it came about. The Grave of the Souls is like a giant nurturing vessel for soul weapons, countless powerful soul weapons grow on the cliffs in this cave like living plants. The difference between soul weapons and ordinary weapons is that, similar to soul masters, they have their own return circuit of the soul, the soul powers move along the carvings on the soul weapon and can generate a large amount of power, at the same time, soul weapons have the ability to contain soul beasts, hence, people with soul weapons can be said to own two soul beasts. However, only a disciple is qualified to enter the Grave of the Souls to retrieve their own soul weapon, and thus, only disciples and lords can have two soul beasts. Also, once a disciple enters the Grave of the Souls, no matter if they successfully retrieved a powerful soul weapon, he or she can never set foot into the Grave of the Souls again in this lifetime.”

“So powerful? How is it compared to my Cang Xue Zhi Ya?”

“Different soul weapons have different volumes, the stronger the soul weapon, the stronger the soul beast it’s able to contain. But the soul weapon also needs to habitat the soul master’s body, just like how the ‘First Soul Beast’ needs to inhabit the lord’s seal to regain their energy, the soul weapon requires the physical body of the soul master in order to regain their soul powers.”

“You mean……put a weapon……in the body?” Qi Ling feels goose b.u.mps on his skull.

“Yeah. Do you want to see my soul weapon?” Yin Chen turns and looks at Qi Ling expressionlessly.

“No no! Thank you!” Qi Ling feels sick in his stomach; “You were talking about the bottom of the ocean just now? How should we get there? Do we need to get a large s.h.i.+p? I need to put this out first, I have no money……”

Yin Chen takes in a deep breath and stalks off……
 

“Uh……what happened here?” Qi Ling stands at the opening of a narrow tunnel, everything is in shambles, crackled walls, collapsed holes, debris scattered everywhere.

Yin Chen stands rooted to the ground wordlessly, his long eyes shrouded in the gloom. A faint wave of soul powers can be detected; remnants of the battle from before. It is evident that the battle has only taken place a short while ago. And from the intricacy of the soul powers drifting in the air, these do not belong to just any ordinary soul master, from the precision level; they at least belong to disciples, if not lords.

The sunlight from above their heads illuminates everything in the tunnel; the small shards of rock and the dust particles float in the light like golden mist.

“Didn’t you say we were going to the sea bed? Why are we here?” Qi Ling asks.

“The seventeenth statue from here is the ‘Chess Piece’ that enters the Grave of the Souls.”

Qi Ling rubs his temples, a pained expression on his face, “Imma say this, master Yin Chen……May I please know what this chess piece is……”

Yin Chen rolls his eyes at Qi Ling, “A chess piece is actually a teleporting battle formation that has soul powers casted on it, through the seal on something solid, it opens and connects the time and s.p.a.ce between two locations. The appearance of a chess piece can be anything, a pebble, a tree, a door, a weapon, a statue, they can all be chess pieces. Chess pieces are scattered all over Odin mainland. And this chess piece in Rennes is connected to the Grave of the Souls.”

“Ah……” Qi King gazes at the row of eye-less Medusa statues, finding it hard to believe that they can lead to another s.p.a.ce.

“Go ahead. Touch the seventeenth status.” Yin Chen tells Qi Ling.

“Me? Alone?” Qi Ling shakes his head violently, “No no no no, I don’t dare……”

“Of course you’re going alone. I’ve been there when I was a disciple. I do not have the ability to enter again.” Yin Chen stares at the long and narrow s.p.a.ce, his gaze shrouded in the shadows.
 

[West of Aslan Empire – Port city of Rennes]

Qi Ling stares at the row of creepy Medusa statues while clicking his tongue, making no move to leave, Yin Chen had to go ahead and grab him by the collar to drag him away from the statues. After struggling and realizing that he cannot escape, Qi Ling switches to verbal attacks, “Put me down! You’re heaving me along like a naughty child, I’m losing so much face!” “Let me tell you, I may only be seventeen now, but I will grow taller, don’t think you can drag me here and there just because you’re half a head taller than me right now!” “Let me tell you……gurgle gurgle splatter splatter……” ——Of course, the result is him spiting out ice shards while being dragged from the narrow tunnel and to the front of a small but refined inn.

Two white flags and a pair of delicately carved bronze lights hang from the entrance of the inn. From the open door, a room full of people who are not of the lower cla.s.s are drinking tea and conversing with each other.

Yin Chen ungrasps Qi Ling’s collar and walks into the lobby.

“Didn’t you say we were going to the Grave of the Souls just now, why are we here to stay at a motel?” Qi Ling enters after Yin Chen while questioning him who is currently inquiring if there are any rooms available.

“Only one room is left.” The owner points at a sign full of metal tags that has only one empty slot left.

“No! It must be two rooms!” Qi Ling glances at Yin Chen’s frosty but handsome side profile and blushes fiercely. He stammers as he requests, “There must be two.”

Yin Chen takes the bronze tag the owner hands him and moves to the stairs. Without turning his head back, he tells Qi Ling coldly: “Come up. If not I’ll drag you up.”

Qi Ling’s face falls as he jogs to keep up with Yin Chen.
 

Upon entering the room, Qi Ling sees Yin Chen hanging up his robe on the rack beside the bed before taking out two golden fruits from his inner s.h.i.+rt, the fruits are small and resemble golden cherries.

“What is this?” Qi Ling walks over and looks at the golden fruit in Yin Chen’s hands.

“This is the fruit of a tree known as ‘Sishya’. Sishya is the G.o.ddess of Light in the legends, this fruit is named after her, and in the legend this fruit is the eye of the G.o.ddess.”

“Woah…… is it that if you ate it your soul powers will suddenly increase drastically and in a flash it’d reach your level? I heard stories like this when I was young, there will always be magical fruits or medicine like this!” Qi Ling’s eyes s.h.i.+ne brightly. With a serious expression, he stares at the golden fruit in Yin Chen’s hand, “give it to me now!” written obviously on his face/

Yin Chen’s expression remains pa.s.sive as he backhand’s Qi Ling’s head, “You’ve been listening to too many stories.”

After saying that, he walks over and reaches out to squeeze Qi Ling’s chin, pulling his face closer to him. “Why are you closing your eyes? What’s wrong with you.” Yin Chen rolls his eyes and sighs as he stares at the handsome flus.h.i.+ng face of Qi Ling.

“It’s a conditioned reflex! Also, how am I supposed to know what you want to do this time?” Qi Ling opens his wide eyes, his lashes quivering in his anxiousness, looking like two soft black feathers. Yin Chen looks at Qi Ling’s face that is only a few centimeters away from him and stills, thinking about how many girls will fall for this handsome face. Yin Chen’s expression relaxes as he tells Qi Ling: “Open your eyes wide and do not move.”

After saying that, Yin Chen pinches a fruit of Sishya and holds it above Qi Ling’s eyes before squeezing a few drops of the golden liquid onto his iris.

A gush of cooling and comfortable feeling like that of spring water moistens his eyes. Qi Ling rubs his eyes, when he opens them again; the Yin Chen who had been cladded in pristine white robes is currently shrouded in a layer of mist like golden dust.

“This…… this is……” Qi Ling lifts his hand and waves at the slow moving golden dust surrounding Yin Chen, the golden dust scatters across the s.p.a.ce, looking whimsical……

“This is the ‘Golden Soul Mist’,” Yin Chen’s expression hardens, as if an explosion just occurred silently, a wave of golden mist erupts form his body and fills the entire room instantly, “This is the physical ent.i.ty of our soul powers.”

Qi Ling stands in a daze, rooted to the ground as he stares at the flowing golden waves filling the room.

Yin Chen lifts his hand to push open the window, he points outside and tells Qi Ling: “Look outside the window.”

Qi Ling rubs his eyes as he moves closer to the window to look outside, his eyes widens in surprise as he finds it hard to believe that this is the world he has always been living in.
 

Between the packed buildings of the city, stand after strand of golden mist are currently flowing slowly, resembling transparent silk strips that fold into the air above the city. Occasionally, some people emit more obvious golden soul mist, in the white-topped palace in the middle of the city; the golden soul mist is a lot more concentrated, as if a cloud of damp water vapour is enveloping the entire palace.

In the distance, gushes of golden powder-like mist rise occasionally from the depths of the ocean along with the waves, as if a large whale’s spraying of a column of water, the mist can be seen floating everywhere on the land.
 

Qi Ling looks dumbfounded as he turns back, Yin Chen sits down on the bed and lifts his silver eyes as he addresses Qi Ling: “Sit down, I’ll tell you.”

Qi Ling moves over obediently and plops himself down on the wooden floor, he stretches his long legs in front of him, when he lifts his head, his eyes are filled with a gaze of yearning. Every single time, as long as it concerns the world of soul bending, it’s as if he is a newborn, curious about every single thing.

“The golden soul mists you’re seeing now are actually out soul powers. Soul powers impregnates every inch of this soil, the only difference is the concentration. When we put them in action, the golden patterns you see on our bodies is the effect of the mobility of the golden soul mist in our bodies, because the concentration when we use them is extremely high, that is the reason why it an be seen by the naked eye. On a normal day, this cannot be seen, only eyes washed by the juice of the Sishya fruit can see them.”

“Is the golden soul mist produced naturally?” Qi Ling asks.

“No one knows the origins of the golden soul mist. We can only know where the concentration is higher and thicker and when it is thinner As for the original source, it is possible that only the Silver Priests know. This involves the roots of all the soul powers on this mainland. Without the golden soul mist, there will be no lords, no disciples, soul beasts or even soul masters.”

“Oh yeah, Yin Chen, I haven’t asked you yet, how come there are animals like the soul beast? Are they formed in nature? Are they born that powerful?”

“This is what I’ve been saying, without the golden soul mist, there will be no soul beasts. Actually, any person or beast, if they inhabit a place with high concentration of the mist, then there will be mutations occurring. This mutation will start to occur through the being taking in the mist through breaking, the sinking into the skin and other ways of entering the body. Constant flowing of the golden soul mist will result in different types of return circuits of the soul, which are basically the golden patterns on our skin. The more complicated and dense the return circuits, the more soul powers can be transferred, the more ways they can be applied. Aside from this way of nature, the other way a return circuit can be generated is when a lord bestows a lord’s seal to the disciple, this will instantly allow the disciple to form an identical return circuit as their lord.

“In the entire country, there is a place that has a high concentration of high-leveled soul beasts and that is the Abyss Corridor, it is currently one of the only places on this piece of land that has such high concentration of the golden soul mist. It’s just that there are very few people that can reach the very depths of the Abyss Corridor, legends state that there is a golden lake made up of entirely golden soul mist, the concentration of the mist is so dense that they exist in liquid state. Hence, in the entire creepy valley, there gathers tens of thousands of high-leveled soul beasts. The other place that has a high concentration of the golden soul mist is where you’ll be obtaining your soul weapon which is the Grave of the Souls at the bottom of the ocean, that is also the exact reason why it can nurture and create so many powerful soul weapons.”

“Ah…… so soul beasts came about like that,” Qi Ling scratches his head and smiles, “Turns out Cang Xue Zhi Ya was once a small lion cub who randomly fell into a golden pond and took a bath, by the time it crawled out, it already has wings so it became super cool and stuck up! Yin Chen, we should find a pond like this  and take a bath sometime, when we get out, woah, we’d surely become Lord to the First Degree and Disciple to the First Degree, how cool would we be then!”

Yin Chen looks at Qi Ling being excited before he firmly sobers him up: “It’s not so easy. The formation of return circuit of the soul is a very complex process, the effects of the concentration of the mist on humans is also a very subtle and mysterious thing.  Animals with weaker vitality won’t be able to keep their lives intact, let alone become a powerful soul beast, they’d die in the strong golden soul mist; if the concentration is too low, high-leveled soul beasts cannot be formed. Hence, the top-tier soul beasts that exist on this mainland are all very special, and they only survived after going through the changes of tens of thousands of years. So basically, this bath you’re talking about, I’d urge you to not take it as of the moment.”

Qi Ling looks dumbfounded.

“Of course, if we’re heavily injured or exhausted too much of our soul powers, if we are in an environment with a high concentration of the golden soul mist, our soul powers will recover a lot faster, even the wounds on our bodies can be healed, the muscle and bone structure will regenerate and our healing ability will increase with the density of the mist. Hence a typical soul master will usually have one of two of these Sishya fruits so when they’re injured, they can find a place nearby with a high concentration of the mist to recuperate.”
 

Qi Ling returns the golden fruit he has been fiddling with to Yin Chen, rubbing his eyes; the golden soul mist can no longer be seen. “The effect of the juice only lasts for a short while.” Yin Chen tells him.

At this moment, cheers and singing can be heard from outside the window, Qi Ling walks over to take a look before turning to Yin Chen and saying: “There are so many people outside the window! Looks like they are going to have some sort of celebration?”

“Today is the Rennes’ ‘Yuecheng Festival’, a festival to wors.h.i.+p the king of the ocean, Sainz, from the legends. As Rennes is a port city, the livelihoods of the people are mostly connected to fis.h.i.+ng. Hence, the person who controls the ocean is a very important G.o.d in their hearts.”

“Really?! Then can I go and see it?” Qi Ling’s eyes s.h.i.+ning brightly, “I’ve never left the tiny town of Fauser since I was young, only during the new year do we wear our newest clothes and a few families gather together to sing, so I’ve never seen such a large scale celebration before!”

Looking at the youth with hair as dark as ink and irises twinkling in the light, Yin Chen smiles gently, his frost-like appearance seeming to melt graduating along with the suns.h.i.+ne and wind, “Then you go ahead and play. I’ll instruct you on things to take note of in the Grave of the Souls later on. We’ll head over there together tomorrow for you to get your own soul weapon.”

“Yay!” Qi Ling rushes to the door, two steps in, he pauses and turns to squat in front of Yin Chen, lifting his head to look at him, he says, “Aren’t you going with me? Won’t it be boring staying here all alone?”

“No. I’ve gotten used to it over the years.” Yin Chen smiles as he reaches out to caress the thick mane of hair atop his head.

“Ugh, let’s go!” Qi Ling stands up and grabs Yin Chen’s hand before dragging him out.

“Heh heh, let me tell you, I’m really not going.” The smile on Yin Chen’s face is light, his face resembling a blooming peach blossom, at the same time, his clothes rustles as a small scorpion makes its way out form his sleeve, jumping onto the back of Qi Ling’s hand that’s holding Yin Chen’s, it raises its tail before jabbing its stinger into his flesh.

“Woah ah ah ah ah ah! How shameful can you be, letting out your soul beast to attack your own disciple!” Qi Ling withdraws his hand as he glares at Xue Ci which is currently bouncing on Yin Chen’s shoulder, and Xue Ci is not intimidated at all, waving its little pinchers as it screeches loudly before waving them even more dramatically, putting its legs down and gesturing obnoxiously for him to attack……

Qi Ling places a palm on his forehead before waving it away with a helpless expression, “Forget it……”
 

Qi Ling opens the door to the room, after walking out, he turns back in and tells Yin Chen: “If you need me just call for me from the window, my hearing is really good, I’d be back immediately.”

“If there’s really something I can’t handle, it’d be useless even if you returned.” Yin Chen mocks Qi Ling as he feeds Xue Ci small chunks from an apple.

“You can’t be too certain of that! I have a lion in my body!” Qi Ling raises an eyebrow and rolls his eyes defiantly at Yin Chen, “I’m off!”

Yin Chen nods, “You have the same lord’s seal on your body as me, so, if something really happens, for example my life disappearing, or suddenly leaving you behind and going to somewhere that’s really far away, your lord’s seal will sense it.”

“That’s great.” Qi Ling smiles and shuts the door.
 

Qi Ling’s footsteps disappear after descending the stairs.

Yin Chen gets up to close the window, the sound of the celebration outside dulls. The moonlight s.h.i.+nes in through the grills on the window, casting a soft and tender yellow glow on his cold and frosty looks.

How long has it been since he became used to such loneliness? It seems like he can no longer remember.

These few years, he’s pa.s.sed overgrown ancient forests, made it through borderless swamps, crossed vast fields of snow, trudged through deserts, came upon countless relics that have been sealed in the desert of time. He became used to only having his soul beast as a companion, it has been a long time since he has spoken so much.