Chapter 2

Yichen bounced Xiaoyue up and down on his knee, calming her with small pats on her back as he glowered down at Huotian. The boy sat cross-legged with his head turned away.

"I'll ask you again. What did you say to Yueyue?" Yichen asked with a steely tone in his voice. "I'm not mad, alright?"

Huotian mumbled something under his breath.

"What? Speak up, bud."

"I said Xiaoyue was going to be kicked out now that the prince is awake! There, you happy? Now go put me in jail or whatever, Uncle." Huotian gnashed his teeth as he said the last word.

"Xingxing," Yichen said softly. "You aren't in trouble, okay? I just need you to understand that it's not okay to talk that way to our friends."

Huotian reddened at the mention of his nickname. "Xuefeng ripped out my eye! You can't blame me for not liking him!"

I finally decided to interject. "You deserved it, brat."

"Hey!" Yichen's ponytail came undone as he turned towards me, allowing locks of black hair to fall over his face. He brushed it to the side and glared at me. "I was just about to come grab you. Apologize to Huotian, now."

"Why?" I challenged. "If you attack someone, you should be ready to pay the price, don't you think?"

"Because power shouldn't be used to harm people!" he thundered back. "Apologize, now. I'm not gonna ask again, son."

"And if I don't?" I asked, standing up.

The man glared at me, emitting a pressure so great that even Iadra's paled in comparison. He gently placed Xiaoyue on the bed before lunging at me. I braced myself, using my arms to shield my face, expecting him to strike.

The strike never landed. He stopped a few inches from my face, blasting a gust of wind through my hair. He picked me up and wrapped his arm around my waist, carrying me under his arm.

"I hate to do this, but you're getting a spanking."

What the hell is a spanking? I wondered.

A woman stopped him from carrying me out the door with a playful whistle. I recognized her as Miss Zhang. I looked back at Xiaoyue and sure enough, they were definitely mother and daughter. Besides having green eyes, as opposed to Miss Zhang's blue ones, they looked near-identical. The only major difference was their expressions. I had only seen either a panicked, nervous, or terrified expression on Xiaoyue's face, but her mother wore a wry smile and have a mischevious twinkle in her eye.

"There are better ways to make them get along, you know?" she noted.

Yichen sighed. "Like what? The two of them won't even look at each other, and you know what? I don't even blame Huotian. Xuefeng ripped out his eye, for Styrmir's sake."

I smiled smugly at the realization that I was still worshipped by humans.

"Why not let them duke it out? Nobody's using the training area this late anyways."

Yichen pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "You can't be serious, Yanjing."

The woman shrugged. "Why not? It worked for you and Tianhu, didn't it?"

"Yeah, and look how that asshole turned out." Yichen muttered.

"That's exactly my point!" Miss Zhang exclaimed, clapping in excitement. "Even though he was an ass, fighting your issues out helped a little, right?"

Xiaoyue let out a small whimper, drawing my attention. She had the blanket on my bed wrapped around herself, huddled in a small ball. I didn't have much time to dwell on it, because Huotian lunged at me, causing Yichen to hoist me above his head.

"Let me at him! I'll kill him!" Huotian screeched, locks of purple hair falling over his eyes as he shook his head wildly like some sort of crazed animal. In my short time at the palace, I was noticing that all of the children were either dead silent, or completely unhinged.

As he held me out of reach from Huotian's crazed swipes, Yichen shot Miss Zhang a questioning look. The woman sighed in response, and then rolled her eyes.

"Look, I know Huotian's powerful and all, but one of them had their eye ripped out." She paused for a moment before continuing, "and let's just say the future king isn't going to need makeup to cover up scars during his coronation."

From underneath the hand pushing his head down, Huotian sputtered in disbelief. Ignoring his complaints about how he was caught off guard, Yichen looked up as if trying to recall something.

"Ah," he said after a few moments. "Come to think of it, I think I did see aura manifest around Xuefeng's hands."

"Are you trying to tell me that this boy is already a knight-class aura user? The first time he manifested aura, he happened to skip an entire class?" Miss Zhang demanded. "If that's true, then he's even more talented than you!"

She slapped him on the back, soliciting a glare in response from Yichen. She urged him to take us to the training ground, and made sure to promise she would heal anybody who got hurt.

"Fine." Yichen shut the door quietly, gesturing that Xiaoyue had fallen asleep. Miss Zhang excused herself and stepped back into the room, presumably to make sure Xiaoyue was alright. Meanwhile, Yichen walked us through the halls and opened the door at the end of the hall.

I recognized this balcony. It was the same balcony I had leapt off of before I was trapped in this body. Despite the view being completely different, the direction of the moon told me it was the same one. My memory was cut short by the sound of Yichen grunting.

"Fly, genius."

He threw Huotian over the balcony with one hand, still carrying me with the other. To my surprise, two minature cylones formed at Huotian's feet, allowing him to hover down to the ground.

"Hey, a warning would have been nice, Uncle!" Huotian hollered from below.

Yichen jumped from the ledge, a blue energy coating the bottom of his feet. Instead of hovering down like Huotian, he walked down, as if he was descending a staircase. My jaw hung open, causing me to swallow a few bugs. This man had managed to do something even Donghai, the first human to use aura, couldn't do.

"You impressed? Your old man's not a legend-class for no reason, bud." Yichen smiled as he boasted.

A sharp pain in my chest caused me to wince a little. Yichen's smile looked too much like Donghai's, which was to be expected, since they were directly related. The thought that I'd never be able to see him again was too much for me to process.

"Okay, here are the rules. Anything goes, don't kill each other. Even Yanjing won't be able to bring you back from the dead. Also, even though it's possible for her to regrow limbs, please try not to go that far." he pleaded, looking pointedly at me.

Miss Zhang ran up next to Yichen. "What'd I miss?" she panted.

"We're just about ready to start. Anything else you want to add?"

A wide grin spread across her face. "Go crazy, kiddos. Let it all out, and then make up after."

The two of us turned around and walked to opposite ends of the makeshift arena. It was fairly large, maybe about twenty-five meters in width and length. As I reached the end, I noticed that Huotian had been dragging his feet, kicking up sand. The brat was too sloppy to even walk properly. I didn't care how talented Yichen claimed he was, there was no way I was going to lose.

As Miss Zhang yelled at us to start, my mind flashed back to my duel with Iadra. I waited for him to make a move so I could counter. Again, I didn't move a muscle, tensing myself in preparation to react to anything Huotian might try.

"Hey!" he yelled with his hands raised. "Did you know? The ground here is really tight."

Seeing as he was talking nonsense, I decided to strike first. The boy was obviously too dumb to understand how a duel was meant to work. I tried channeling mana through my body, but I couldn't feel anything escape my core. Despite my lack of mana, I was still moving quick enough to close the distance.

"You didn't let me finish." Huotian smirked. A small spark escaped his hand, igniting the air around us. I was thrown back, landing right on my head. As I tried to recover, I saw another cyclone swirling around Huotian, who was completely unscathed.

"Apparently, the sand here is extremely flammable, as long as you can loosen up the ground to kick it up. The things Xiaolong comes up with are genius." An evil grin crept onto his face. "Do you understand now? This is a fire and wind mage's dream come true!"

"Fire and wind, huh? Maybe we are alike after all." I muttered. Despite trying, I still couldn't feel any mana coming from my core.

"We're nothing alike."

Two gusts of wind propelled Huotian forward, his shoulder slamming into my stomach hard enough to knock me back a few feet. Out of breath, I struggled to stand back up. A shadow was cast over my face before I rolled to the side hurriedly, narrowly dodging an axe kick from Huotian. A small crater was left next to my head, and that's when I realized— This boy was a genius when it came to battles.

Despite not using it much, I was still the first to use explosion-type magic, by combining wind and fire mana. I preferred storm and lightning type magic because of its precision, but in terms of pure firepower, explosion magic was probably stronger. This boy, despite possessing both of the attributes required, was unable to use explosion magic. To make up for his weakness, he was subtly manipulating the air to carry up some flammable dust, and then igniting it to augment his strikes. His control was so fine that I couldn't even detect the wind picking up dust.

Before I could think of a plan of action, he charged at me again, throwing a right hook, sending me flying again with explosive force. Thankfully, a pile of sand broke my fall.

"Huotian, don't do it!" The alarmed voices of Miss Zhang and Yichen rang out.

"Boom. Ignite." Huotian commanded.

A small spark appeared near my foot, causing the pile of the flammable sand to combust. In a moment of desperation, I gave up on trying to use my mana. I tried to cover myself in aura, like Mars or Donghai. I felt something in me strengthen, like I was bracing myself for impact.

The force of the explosion rocketed me into the sky, causing a loud crack in my back. I looked below me and screamed. The pain of my spine violently bending, the wind ripping against my face on the way down, and the humiliation of losing a duel was too much for me to bear.

Before I could hit the ground and be reincarnated again, a streak of blue snatched me out of the air. I looked up to see the face of Yichen, around him a wispy and translucent blue dragon. It was interesting that Donghai's aura shape didn't pass down through the generations.

"I told you this was a bad idea! Xuefeng didn't even get to fight back!" he groaned as he gently set me down on the ground.

"If he decided to use his aura earlier, it probably wouldn't have ended up this way." Miss Zhang said, walking over to us.

A green light glowed from underneath her skin, and then her aura manifested as a pair of wings and a halo. She waved her hand in my direction, sending a few wisps of aura over to me. It swirled around my skin for a few moments before dissipating. The pain I was feeling instantly subsided. It was a weird feeling, to have pain that intense disappear instantly, but a welcome one for sure.

"He's healed, right?" Huotian yelled from across the arena. "Let me at him! I ain't done with him yet!"

Yichen smiled weakly. "Let's wrap it up here, hm?"

Huotian swiped his hand to the side angrily. "No! We're going until I'm satisfied!"

His hands burst into flames as a small cyclone formed around him, waving his hair around. I stood up and raised my fists, lowering my center of gravity and tensing. I breathed deeply, trying to remember the feeling of aura flowing around my body. I couldn't see the misty purple energy surrounding my hands, but I felt stronger for sure.

I wasn't sure if it was something to do with the strange form of healing that Miss Zhang provided, but as Huotian charged at me, I noticed that all of the colors seemed to be a lot more defined compared to before.

Yichen sighed. "Alright, if you want to continue, I won't stop you."

A small scraping sound caught my attention. It reminded me of the hourglasses that were sold in the Heiguang market when I visited with Donghai. Out the corner of my eye, I could see small grains of sand dragging on the floor, inching towards me.

"Nice try," I said, dashing towards him. Before I could hit him, he blasted me back with a gust of wind.

He clicked his tongue in frustration. "Do you know why even though I'm only a class-two mage, I don't need to use encantations?"

"What the hell is an encantation?" I asked, my voice dripping with annoyance.

The boy smirked, and pointed up. An opaque, teal energy gathered around him, coalescing above him to form a massive teal dragon.

"Fei Lian." I said, remembering the one who had taught me the usage of wind mana. An imitation of him loomed above, menacingly staring me down.

"I'm glad you know! Your pawn-level aura won't save you from this! Even the royal guard trainees struggle against this spell!"

"Oh, for Styrmir's sake!" I heard Yichen exclaim from the sidelines. "Yeah, real good idea, Yanjing, I'm sure Huotian won't go insane and use a class five spell!"

"The boy'll be fine. You said he was knight-class, didn't you? Worst case scenario, I can patch him up afterward." Miss Zhang dismissed him. Her tone was lax, but there was an uncertain edge to it.

"He hasn't externally manifested aura yet! Maybe it was a fluke this morning! If he's actually only pawn-class, he could die!"

Huotian pointed at me in an over-dramatic fashion and smirked.

"Fei Lian's Wrath!"