20 Chapter 20

this is an additional chapter for your support, several more chapters will be released today and I think they will not disappoint you

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Nothing worked out for anyone. We sat and meditated, well, tried to meditate, on the water in a cup, but no results appeared. Aang probably made the most progress. And no, he couldn't start bending the water either, but he managed to detach himself from many irritants, so he should soon be able to completely detach from irritants and move on to the next stage of development.

Meanwhile, I was playing with fire. Just kidding. Obviously, I wasn't playing but being very careful, wouldn't want to accidentally burn the fur of a flying bison.

That incident with achieving peak emotional synchronization allowed me to make a leap in development, so that just a couple of hours later, I was able to create a small flame above my palm. The yellow flame, like that of a candle, burned in my hand, and I looked at it with admiration. Another element had succumbed to me. Even if it was only the initial stage, but three out of

the four elements... that means something, indeed.

Extinguishing and reigniting the flame in my hand, I spent a couple of hours, until Aang said that it was time to rest Appa. For this, a small clearing with a ditch or a dried-up riverbed not too far away was chosen.

Sokka went to look for food, Aang sat in front of the cup with water and meditated, detaching from all irritants. Katara seconded him, while I, with earthbending, created several large rocks around myself and experimented with fire.

The experiments revealed several very interesting phenomena. First, fire, as an element, is the easiest to create, and it's done somewhat involuntarily, unlike the other elements, which are used from existing resources, be it soil and rocks for earthbenders, water and liquids for waterbenders, air and gases for airbenders. Firebending... it is created with chi force, not used from already existing sources, though that's also possible.

However, after this, new details begin. First - creating flame is simple, releasing a stream of fire into a rock turned out to be just as simple.

Training and development first in waterbending, bloodbending, which is costly in terms of power, and then earth... all this developed bending power in me and now... creating a huge jet of fire and hitting a rock with it was simple, but just holding the fire in my hands was much harder! Just a couple of minutes of holding it, and my hands start to shake, and bloodbending doesn't help at all, I just don't know what to do to calm my hands and stop the shaking, and I don't feel any physical changes, so I concluded that it's something else.

After a couple of minutes of holding a clump of fire in my hands, I could no longer keep it under control, and it burst out of my grasp, shooting out in all directions and even leaving very noticeable marks on the rocks.

The first time this happened, I got a bunch of burns on my hands and face, yelping more from surprise than from the burns, so immediately with trembling hands, I created a container in the ground and began to condense water, collecting it there. I spent ten minutes gathering water and then heated it.

"What are you doing?" Katara asked me from behind.

"Why aren't you meditating?" I asked, not turning to her and grimacing, using waterbending to remove my clothes.

"I couldn't do it yet, and then I heard your scream and silence... so I decided to find out..." Katara said, slowly approaching me.

"Experiments with firebending yielded results. Interesting results, but the payment was quite unpleasant!" I turned to her and showed my hands and face, now covered in numerous burns.

"Ouch!" Katara recoiled from me. I understand her, given the burning pain, half of my face now, if not more, was in fresh burns.

"Not the most pleasant sight, right? Now don't interfere with fixing mistakes."

Stripping down to my underwear, I quickly climbed into the water, which was steaming, took a deep breath, and submerged. The familiar desire to heal myself completely, and I felt a pleasantly familiar itching sensation all over my body, especially in the places where I previously felt pain from burns.

I stayed underwater for a couple of minutes, then surfaced to breathe in some fresh air and dove back under. Each immersion and resurfacing, with the discomfort of the sore spots meeting the water and air, brought a new pulse of pain. However, with each dive, the pain lessened. After twelve immersions, I realized that I no longer felt pain, so the next time I surfaced, I calmly leaned back against the warm earth, compacted to the hardness of stone, made myself an ice mirror, and looked into it. There were no signs of burns on my face anymore, but my hair had been badly singed, leaving an unappealing look - while most of my hair was long - I was too lazy to cut it shorter, the part that caught fire had almost completely burned off, leaving only short spikes that hadn't burned.

Obeying my will, a stream of water separated from the rest, forming a thin water thread that with one movement trimmed the excess hair, leaving an even length of about an inch and a half all over my head.

In the mirror, I noticed Katara, who was sitting by the rocks and watching me.

"Keep in mind, you're not my type, so don't stare at me so blatantly, Katara. Better go back to Aang and continue meditating."

"Can you heal wounds with water?" asked Katara.

"Only on myself, but yes, I can. That's why I agreed to teach you, Katara, bending, in exchange for taking me to the North Pole. There, I want to learn full healing. It's a useful skill, you know."

"Why do you torment yourself? If firebending causes such pain..."

"Katara, pain is nothing. Yes, it can drive one insane or even kill, but that takes a lot of effort! Pain is only a temporary phenomenon that will pass once the body's malfunction is corrected. Waterbending helps greatly with that. As for the torment... you don't know my past, Katara, you don't know what I've endured and gone through. I've received burns dozens of times, so I've learned to endure pain. Not accustomed to it, I doubt that's possible, although who knows, but I've learned to bear it."

"But why do you need this?" she asked again.

"And why not? Isn't that a goal in itself?" I turned my head towards the girl.

"To master firebending?"

"No. Why isn't it a goal - to study bending? To reach the heights of bending and, by overcoming these heights, finding new paths, becoming better and better, getting closer to perfection, which I will never achieve. To attain mastery in bending! To become the best of the best! Isn't that a goal? A goal I can always strive for, never feeling emptiness within myself, wasting time in vain."

"And you always want to engage in bending and never do anything else? You need to rest too."

"Agreed. Right now, I am proof of your words. But one must not confuse rest with laziness. Rest is possible only after work; rest is needed to recover and continue working. Rest can take any form, for one can become tired not just physically, but mentally, spiritually, and in each case, rest is different. So yes, I too enjoy rest; it indicates that you have worked well and not wasted time."

"Understood." Katara stood up, turned around, and headed back behind the rocks I had created, towards Aang. "I'll go to Aang, continue meditating as well."

"Good luck to you."

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