The caravan quickly reassembled after the anti climactic ambush before resuming their way.
However, Jin noticed the difference in the eyes of others.
Fear...Wonder?
Perhaps it was due to the fact that Luca could massacre the entire caravan, like how he had done with the bandits, and that nobody would even be able to resist.
This likely brought up a sense of immeasurable fear as even the people who had greeted them kindly during their meeting scurried and tried to give Jin and Luca more space on the cart.
Luca, however, ignored their reactions as he sat back down before taking out the dagger again.
"Where we...Right, sharpening a blade. Here." Luca pulled out the sharpening stone again before starting to demonstrate the sharpening action.
Jin stared at Luca in a dumbfound manner. He had never seen Luca actually fight like this before. And the fact that Luca didn't even bat an eye at how he just killed over a dozen people.
Jin knew that the rules regarding murder was much more vague in this world but he didn't know it was to this extent where one could just kill people in broad daylight and just leave the corpses.
"Um...Dad?" Jin, also with a tint of fear in his voice, asked in a careful manner. "What was that?"
"Hmm? Oh so if you grind it against an angle too steep, then t-"
"No, not that." Jin stopped Luca. "The wind blade you performed earlier. What was that?"
"Oh that." Luca put down the dagger before looking around.
"Hey, you." He then pointed at Sarai. "Come over here."
Sarai, still visibly shocked from the previous fight, obediently came over before sitting beside Luca.
Luca then waved his hands as wind essence once again surrounded them, preventing noise from both entering and escaping.
"This should be beneficial to you in the future if you do practice the elemental pathway so I'll teach you as well. Listen closely." Luca explained.
"The elemental essence is like water. A very light and loose form of water that permeates our entire surroundings, whether in the air or in the ground, at all times. Drawing these together and guiding them around with one's own qi is how the majority of people use them." Luca held out his hands as a small amount of wind essence created a small visible tornado. "There is a method, however, to condense and compress the essence. That's what I did earlier. I compressed a tremendous amount of wind essence onto my dagger before shaping a long blade of qi which guided the compressed wind essence and brought that result."
Sarai listened with sparkling eyes. She had only learned the basics regarding cultivation up to the level of qi condensation from her previous mentor. This was like a whole new world to her.
Jin, on the other hand, had seen the compressed essence with his own eyes and was now deducing in this head how one actually performed it.
"It's no big secret but more so a gimmick. This is mainly for people who are reliant on the elements to fight with. For example, an earth element user may move around out a large amount of condensed earth essence within the ground and create a giant stone spike to jump out from below. The limitations are endless but each element does have an 'upper hand' regarding certain actions." Luca's small tornado then turned into a small symbol of fire.
"Fire, as it is the most offensive element, has the upper hand in burst of power or slow damage over time. On the other hand, it's not good on one-on-one combat as majority of its skills are in a large area."
The symbol then changed into a rock.
"Earth is great at barriers and utilizing gravity and weight. They are the best at large area battles and defensive abilities. Imagine a giant crevice opening up below a battlefield or layers and layers of stone appeared before someone to protect them."
"Wind." Luca looked at Jin. "Is best at slicing and speed. Surrounding your self in wind and speeding up the movement of specific parts of your body or the whole as well as making a paper thin blade of compressed wind, it's entirely designed for one-on-one combat."
"Water." Luca then turned to Sarai. "Don't bother hiding it, I can sense it from you anyway."
Sarai's eyes opened up wide. "Wait, my element is water?" She had never known this fact.
Luca and Jin stared at her in a dumbfound manner.
"Ahem..." Luca coughed for a moment. "You should find a suitable water mentor in the future... As for the water element itself. It's the most versatile. It's not great at anything but not bad at them either. Water can both penetrate and smash, defend and attack. The singular area it does excel in is healing. No other element can perform certain actions that the water element can, such as removing liquid toxins from one's body."
"You said wind was bad at large scaled battles... What if you were to conjure a giant tornado of some sort in a battlefield?" Jin asked in curiosity. It seemed like the limitations of each element was imagination, not its essential traits.
"If you have an endless amount of qi, then any element can be the best at everything. I'm just telling you the most efficient methods of using them." Luca explained. "Fire can create a miniature sun in front of your eyes and melt you instantly or burn an entire battlefield with flames. A giant earthquake that flips the ground upside down or super thin and dense spikes from the ground. Tornadoes and storms versus a cannonball of compressed air. A tsunami that sweeps the battlefield and a blade of condensed ice." Luca chuckled as he gave out examples. "There is no limitations of the elements except qi, it's one of the reasons that pulled me into this world and attracted me."
"...But how much qi would those take?" Jin asked carefully, not letting his imaginations run wild.
"At the brink of ascension, small scale versions of tornadoes or tsunamis are probably possible." Luca spoke out. "But it is an extremely inefficient usage of qi."
"As for you." Luca turned to Sarai once again. "I don't know what path you will take in the future but I highly advise taking the elemental path as water. Earth and Fire benefit more from taking the demonic path of cultivating the body whilst Wind and Water benefit more from the elemental path of cultivating one's qi. As for the reason, you'll find out once you reach spirit reinforcement."
He then waved his hands before breaking down the sound barrier before resuming his sharpening lesson.
Sarai sat beside them, silently, and watched the dagger with a numb gaze whilst Jin was quickly calculating various applications of this newfound knowledge.
-----
Ahn knocked before a large door.
"Come in." A young girl's voice rang out from inside.
"Your servant greets your holi-"
"Told you to stop that." Baek bonked Ahn's head with a small ball of wind before rolling around to stare at him. "What's up."
"Uh..." Rubbing the are he had gotten hit, Ahn responded carefully. "Jin and Luca are on their way here."
"Oooooooooo!!!" Baek jumped up in excitement. "My little black kitty is coming to town! Luca really agreed? Where are they right now?"
"Please calm down your holiness...They are currently about 2 days away." Ahn replied.
"2 days... 2 days...Alright! Hmm... Do you think Luca will try to fight me? I really don't want to fight." Baek asked in worry. She had grown to dislike fighting as a whole ever since she had promoted to the position of a guardian and had descended back onto this world. Mainly because other than the other guardians, most people she had fought she had accidentally killed or injured heavily. And though Luca was 'an enemy of the family' to a small degree, he was still part of her family and her descendant.
"It's likely that his only target is Elder Hiro... As long as you don't interfere and let them handle their own matters, I believe it should be fine." Ahn responded.
"But that kid Hiro is gonna nag me to help him isn't he." Baek spoke with an annoyed tone.
"Probably." Ahn smiled. Elder Hiro wasn't the most powerful person. He was just talented in managing certain internal affairs and had maintained the position of elder at the lower levels of spirit reinforcement whilst many elders were at the peak or even taken a step into the paths.
"Well, I'll just ignore them. I'm more interested in that boy anyway. OOOO! I should go prepare another gift~" Baek quickly disappeared along with that revelation and left Ahn sighing alone in the hall.
"You spoil him too much..." Ahn, quietly stood up to leave the room.
"I CAN HEAR YOU!" A voice echoed throughout the entire mountain as it jolted everyone.
"..." Ahn shook his head and walked away.