Chapter – 70 - Figuring Out A New Way To Use Spiritual Energy

As usual Rihanna first focused on absorbing some of the surrounding energy, then started letting out thin streams of energy to connect with the surrounding energy. She could feel the gentle energy of the light desert breeze, but it took some more effort to trace the energy of earth and fire from the loosely packed sand surface. The fire energy was very little due to the lack of sufficient sunlight.

She tried to focus on the wind first. Using her own energy, she tried to first attract the wind energy, then move it in a certain direction. And that's when she struck her first obstacle - the wind energy would move a little, and then start dispersing in all directions. Try as she might, she couldn't hold on to the energy.

Though wind was relatively easier to control than, say, earth...but still this continuous use of her spirit energy to guide a stream of wind was starting to take a toll on her mental strength. Rihanna was feeling dizzy, and her mind started wandering.

"...to feel the effect of your emotions on your own body....."

"...everything has a rhythm and a flow. You can connect and become one with it only when you are able to find the specific rhythm and flow...."

"..... emotions control the movement, momentum, force, speed and flow...."

As her mind kept moving in a trance, short fragments of instructions invaded her mind. These were from her childhood....the more she listened, the clearer they became. She could even see herself standing in a line of some twenty children, listening to a person dressed in a blue track-suit, standing at the front. This....wasn't this the summer theatre workshop her mother had forced her to attend during her school days?! The one which was supposed to build her character, give her confidence while facing people and interviews, get in connection with her inner self, boost her confidence, etc., etc...?

Rihanna felt her body jerk, and immediately she opened her eyes, returning back to the present.

'Where did you float off to?! If you keep day-dreaming, then the spiders and the tiger will divide the spoil and be gone before you even move a grain of sand!'

With Little Purple berating her right inside her mind, Rihanna closed her eyes again and focused. Feel the rhythm and flow of everything....?....Hmmm....let's see if we can use that here!

Once again she let out a thin string of energy, but this time she combined her sensory perception along with it. When she connected with the wind energy, instead of trying to pull it in a specific direction, she allowed her senses to flow with the energy, trying to get the feel of its rhythm and flow.

As she focused, she felt the slight pull from the breeze, and she floated along with it. The more she concentrated, the more she could feel the tug of the energy from different directions. Was this Brownian motion in gas?? Rihanna started feeling excited. She had studied and even seen this in her experimentations....but to actually feel it happening so vividly, was an amazing experience. She forgot the actual purpose behind this entire experiment and started following the little pulls and tugs coming to her from different directions.

Was that something moving?....wait something just moved again!....slowly she could sense the different particles of energy in the wind as they pulled at her energy string. It was almost like a dance!.....there was no music....but even in it's randomness, she could feel the beats of a free-flowing rhythm.....and the waves of the flow as the particles bounced away and collided and separated and joined and moved up and down and all around....This was so damn cool!!

'Rihanna...focus! don't forget what you are trying to do.'

Little Purple's timely reminder jolted her senses. Gathering back her excitement, she floated around, wondering how to guide this flow of energy. Feels like a dance....! Hmmm.....worth trying!

And so she started dancing along with the flow once again, but this time she increased the string of her own energy, attracting and pulling the particles of wind energy, trying to make them move according to her own will.

After a long while, she seemed to get the hang of it, and the energy of the wind started moving in which ever direction she wanted it to move. As she kept moving it around, she started contemplating what she was going to do with only the wind breeze...

'Why don't you try to gather more wind energy and try to turn it into a mini hurricane....you have already done it before...even if you don't remember, your spiritual senses will remember it.'

'Create a mini hurricane, and then try to scatter all the spiders surrounding the two people?.....let's try it.'

Rihanna increased the energy string once more, allowing more and more wind energy into the ball of energy she had already pulled in to follow her directions. The ball kept growing, and she kept attracting more and more wind energy from the surrounding. As the ball became bigger and more compact, she stopped absorbing the surrounding energy, and concentrated on moving the ball as effortlessly as possible, making it rotate around at a high speed.

But the wind energy started scattering as she increased the speed beyond a limit. Rihanna stopped at once, keeping a loose grip on the ball of wind energy, wondering where she was going wrong.

Little Purple too was feeling frustrated. He had himself never experience such a strange way of moving energy in the surrounding, and didn't quite know what way would help.

'Ummm.....do you think, maybe, changing your emotions would help? The last time the great whirlwind you had conjured had happened when you were extremely angry and stressed.....'

Rihanna felt her lips twitching. How could she keep getting angry every time she needed to attack?! She would start suffering from anger management issues if that continued!....But change in emotions?.....technically, even if you were not using spiritual energy, when a person attacked or fought, the emotions would naturally change...anger, hatred....determination, will.....desire to attack...Hmmm.....she was currently lacking the desire and determination...

Rihanna tried instigating her own emotional state, creating the will to attack. As the desire inside her grew, she could feel the energy flowing out from her body was also changing and becoming stronger....like some kind of inner force was merging into it. Though she was surprised, she did not have the time to stop and analyze this new development. She kept increasing her own will, and used this to increase the speed of rotation of the ball of energy once more.

Unsurprisingly, this time it worked, and the speed grew faster and faster. Strangely, more and more wind energy also started being attracted towards this speeding ball, turning it bigger and denser, and a tiny but strong whirlwind grew out of the ball of energy.

'Okay. Don't lose focus. Now try to move that ball of energy to where those people are standing. Maintain its high speed, and make it circle all around them continuously to scatter all the spiders'

Rihanna sucked in a deep breath, then slowly started moving the tiny whirlwind towards the two people. The spiders had the two remaining cultivators all surrounded, and there was a dense layer of black all over the brown sand in all directions. As the tiny tornado approached, the spiders all sensed danger, and turned around to attack.

Unfortunately, their fiery webs were useless on this remotely-controlled cyclone, and the wind simply tore through the dense crowd, making path for itself through the swarming spiders.

Even as she was monitoring the cyclone, Rihanna remembered a scene from some film she had seen. A guy who could use fire, and he partnered with another who could use wind....and they created a fire tornado, which can cut off all air supply and kill things caught inside it! And here there was a continuous supply of fire!

So Rihanna started sucking in all the fire webs into her cyclone, and soon the tiny cyclone turned into a raging fiery-tornado. The spiders were now faced with their own burning fire, and uncountable number of spiders turned into fried crisps as the fire-tornado hurtled through their lines, sweeping away hundreds and hundreds of them into its growing form.

By now, both, the two cultivators as well as the tiger had realized there was something going on at the back. Both sides stopped in their attack to turn and take a look, and were startled at this sudden changed in the rankings of the spiders. They looked all around, searching for this hidden enemy who was waiting for them to kill each other and then collect from both sides....but strangely there was no one else around!

The two cultivators, who were nearer to the approaching fire, felt scared by this ghostly phenomenon, and were yet to decide if they should make a run for it or stay and fight for their companion, when, to their shock, the fire-tornado moved past them, and started 'eating away' all the spiders surrounding them. They stared at the cyclone in confusion, and it took them two whole circles of the raging cyclone to grasp that some blessed person was actually trying to help them from.....somewhere!

This understanding sent their adrenaline pumping through their body and brain again, and now that someone was taking care of the surrounding spiders, they turned their entire focus on the tiger which was trying to flee with its prey.

They were both at early Foundation Laying stage, and together they might be able to turn the tables for the tiger. With this firm conviction, they increased their speed and intensity of attack on the tiger. The spiders attacking the tiger had yet to retreat, and now facing the combined attacks of the two cultivators, it was quickly falling into a passive state. Moreover, the prey was also not light. It was having difficulty carrying the prey in its mouth and attacking at the same time.

After a while of struggling against enemies on both sides, the tiger finally dropped the third man, then bounded through the still surging ants on its side, and disappeared in the darkness.

Now the tiger was gone, the remaining spiders started targeting the body of the third cultivator. Rihanna used more energy and will power and inner strength, and moved the path of the fiery-tornado once again, now adding the third cultivator's body inside its protection circle.

The third cultivators body was motionless, but through her sensory perception, Rihanna could feel life inside the body lying on the ground. The other two cultivators rushed towards their partner and checked him all over. He was badly injured, but still not beyond saving. The sturdier of the two lifted up the body onto his shoulder. Then both of them looked around once more. Rihanna took it as a sign, and moved her cyclone once more, trying to burn a path through the crawling hordes of spiders. Since she only knew of the path she had herself come through, she started guiding them towards it. At least it was relatively safer as she had not met any beasts on the way here. And it was the fastest way to Mountain City where they could get medical help.

The cultivators seemed to understand what their hidden guardian was trying to do, and without a word they followed the cyclone as it burned the way out for them. As soon as they reached the outer area of the spider circle, both glanced backwards, then without wasting a moment, they simultaneously increased their speed and disappeared towards the distant darkness.

The spiders were raging at this sudden loss of the meal they had almost managed to drag back home, and Rihanna could hear a shrill squeaking and grunting sound echoing all around, as the spiders tried chasing the two cultivators. Unfortunately for them, both the people were using speed techniques, and soon they feel behind, grunting louder and louder in anger. Finally the spiders slowly dived back into the sands, still disgruntled and angry, and total silence weighed down on the surroundings.

Rihanna would have fallen off the bone-rock if she had not wedged herself into the large hole earlier. Sweat was streaming down her head, face, neck, chest, back, hands and even legs. Her breath had turned short, and she was panting hard.

Her mind felt completely dead and weighed down like a ton of bricks. Every inch of her body was aching, a dull throbbing inside her muscles making her want to groan out in discomfort. But she dared not make any unnecessary sounds and attract other beasts in the vicinity. Telling Little Purple to keep a look around, Rihanna fell into a deep sleep, dreaming that she was falling down a never ending abyss.