After Will made his decision on his path of killing, he stood up with a determined look.
When he got up, he noticed that the body of Quent was already gone, and that Old Man Dai and the scraggly bearded man were standing in front of him.
Without waiting a moment, Old Man Dai asked, "What did you decide?" It was clear that he had seen someone kill for the first time before and make their decision.
"Kind but merciless," Will said with a smile on his face. These people had been good to him, and it was clear that they were on his side. With this, he said not another word.
"A good choice. Someone like yourself would do well with that mentality," Old Man Dai said with a warm smile. He was an old man with much experience so he knew very well how well what types of people did with certain mentalities. This mentality suited only the greatest geniuses.
However, despite having heard what Will said, he still doubted a bit because almost all of the geniuses that said "kind but merciless" ended up either as extremely arrogant people or as killers. Kind and merciless we the exact opposite of each other, so it was very hard to maintain both for even the greatest geniuses in this world.
It was like living on the tip of a mountain. Lean too far one way, and you'll fall down. This is what happened to those fallen geniuses. They leaned too far towards merciless and ended up being killers or arrogant. Those who leaned too far towards kind ended up being diplomats or something similar, because the path of being kind was in direct contrast to the world of cultivation, leaving them in the dust fallen behind.
Though Old Man Dai was thinking this, he still kindly smiled and gestured for Will to follow him, after which he headed back to the camp. When they got there, the camp was all packed up and ready to go. There were now some carriages waiting for them, loaded up with what little stuff the soldiers had taken with them. It was a long distance to the kingdom, and they had walked here, but all their stuff and their leaders went in the carriage to make the journey easier.
"Get in. It's a long journey, and you are just a young boy," Old Man Dai said as he offered for Will to get in.
After thinking about it for a moment, Will accepted and got in the carriage. The carriage was small and only had enough room for about six people, but Will alone took up the space of two because of his wings. When he was walking, he could fold them up neatly and have them take up practically no space at all other than the fact that they hung down to his calves. But when he was sitting, his wings could not fold properly, so he had to shift them around to find a comfortable position, but this resulted in him taking up much space.
After he got in, Old Man Dai and the scraggly bearded man got in, followed by one other person who Will had seen on the battlefield.
"The journey should take about a week, so you can do what you want in the meantime," said Old Man Dai.
After him, the scraggly bearded man spoke, saying, "We have hunters out hunting beasts for food, so we eat twice a day and stop at night to sleep."
Will nodded in reply. He then decided to try out the Ruby Heart manual. It was a mid foundational realm manual at the least, and it used the qi from the environment, combined it with the emotion of hope, and directed it into his body. Once in his body, it would reshape his muscles and bones to increase his strength, speed, and senses.
As Will activated this manual and did what it said he closed his eyes and simply tried to sense the qi surrounding him. As he did this, a warm feeling spread through his body, and he seemed to be in harmony with the world.
Around him, slowly, there appeared some pearl colored particles, floating in the air. It started as a mist, but quickly started to gather into drops, eventually forming into a single bead of liquid qi. After this, more and more quickly started to form, eventually leaving many small dots of pearl colored qi floating in the air.
'I've achieved the first part, condensation of qi,' Will thought to himself. 'Now for the hard part, condensation of hope.'
As he continued to sit there, the pearl colored qi started to get unstable, with ripples emerging on the surface. Then, slowly, particles that were so red you could call them black started to appear in the air. Slowly, they also condensed into drops, but these drops were much more unstable than the pearl white drops. Still though, they formed, and eventually came to the same number as the pearl white drops.
At this moment, Old Man Dai and the others were absolutely astonished because they had only ever heard of condensing white drops of qi, not pearl or infinitely dark red. Despite their astonishment, they said nothing.
In a few minutes, Will had a dense storm of drops of deep red and pearl white drops floating around him. He was now ready for the next step, "forming the stream," which was taking those individual drops and combining them together, making a stream of qi.
As Will tried to do this, he quickly started feeling tired. The drops started to combine, forming an extremely unstable stream of pearl white qi and another stream of deep blood red qi.
However, he had only condensed about half of each stream before he passed out, after which all the condensed qi fell on the floor, burning through it in an instant.
It was clear that this qi was very dangerous. Otherwise, it would have simply dissipated into the air like normal. In a moment of pure instinct, before he passed out, Will covered himself with his wings to protect himself from the dangerous liquid qi in the air.
Even when he covered himself with his wings, some of the liquid qi fell on him. The red qi instantly started to burn through his skin, but the pearl white qi just sat there, instead seeming to heal him.
After a few moments, all of the qi had dissolved, leaving being some patches of burned skin along with some that seemed softer than silk and bursting with vitality.
However, Will's ruby wings were perfectly unharmed as the qi simply slid off of them onto the floor, where they simply burned through it.
In the end, the area all around Will was in tatters and burned, but still solid as the carriage had been made solidly and with plenty of support to every part.
Old Man Dai and the other two were baffled by what they saw. This qi was so strong that it not only didn't dissipate in the air, but instead actually burned through solid wood?
They wanted to help Will, but they saw that he was wrapped in his wings and immediately gave up. When Will was shot with the poison arrow, they had tried to move his wings to get the arrow out, but they failed because they couldn't budge his wings even a centimeter even after using all their strength. It was as if the wings had really turned into solid crystal.
With nothing more they could do, they continued to simply sit there, hoping that Will would be ok.