Chereads / Heart of Ruby (Old version) / Chapter 52 - 52 - Hope and anger

Chapter 52 - 52 - Hope and anger

As Will lay there, half a day quickly passed and it was now daytime again with the streets bustling with people from all over the sect.

At this moment, Will, who had been peacefully lying on the floor for the past half day woke up with a start. He quickly sat up and realized what had happened. He currently did not have much power left in his heart, but he could still function just fine even though he was not at his optimum. He quickly examined the capsules within his body and realized that there were two large capsules completely full of inner breath; they were the inner breaths of calmness and hope respectively while he noticed that there was a new smaller capsule which had lit up. It was the capsule for the qi of anger, and it was bright red, as if it was the sun turned red, shining brightly. It seemed to look innocent but at the same time vile and malignant like a harmless looking flame which could burn down your life in only a second if you didn't pay attention to it.

This was how anger was. Everyone got angry at some point, but most people can control their anger, so they figure that it is harmless. However, at any moment, that anger can grow like a fire, spreading, and eventually taking over that person and making them a loose cannon attacking anything that comes near them, anything that dares to stop them from achieving their goal, whether it be to kill someone or to make them suffer, it made no difference as long as it was anger which fueled it.

Putting this thought aside for now, Will decided to investigate the new inner breath which he had gained. He figured that it should have the same effect as the inner breath of calmness when used the same. As such, he figured that if it came to dire circumstances, he could use it to forcefully rip away someone or something's hope, bringing it to a state of misery and pain, but it would not kill them like the inner breath of calmness did as chaos killed while hopelessness brought agony. To live without hope could not be considered living at all as no matter what happened, you could not bring yourself out of a bad situation no matter how small it was. The moment you would be faced with a problem, you would completely give up without resistance to the point that you would not be able to defend yourself in the slightest. This would never be considered living. Instead, it would be considered living your life as a slave to everyone never knowing a way out even if it sat right in front of you. You would be so lost that even if you ran free, you would still never be able to truly escape from anything.

However, he figured that if he could use it the same, he should also be able to use it to strengthen someone's hope and bring them out of a bad situation even if it seems hopeless. To take those who had been enslaved all their lives with no way out, and make it so that they could find the way out, to grasp onto the fine thread that could pull them off the edge of the cliff. This was what hope would do to the hopeless.

However, he had no clue what the physical properties of the inner breath of hope would be. As such, he quickly got out a piece of wood that he had in his spatial ring. He had gotten it to test the properties of his new inner breath once he broke through. As he sat it on the ground, he directed the inner breath out of his body. This time, the inner breath seemed extremely weak compared to the inner breath of calmness when he first got it, but he knew that it was due to the suppression of the environment. Guiding it, the inner breath of hope slammed into the piece of wood, and nothing happened at first, but the next moment, the piece of wood began to warm up, eventually starting to smoke within two breaths, and after another four full breaths of time, the entire piece of wood was violently burning like crazy, and one breath after that it had disintegrated into ash, leaving nothing but the inner breath strand which was shaped like a blade of grass flowing around in the air.

The next thing he did was take out another piece of wood and suddenly directed the qi of anger out of his body and onto the wood. Nothing happened for a few breaths, but after a while the wood started to shake, eventually having it vibrate violently and seemed as if it might fall apart at any moment from the shaking. Five breaths later, the piece of wood directly shook itself into pieces, leaving big chunks behind that eventually broke into smaller pieces as well and those eventually into splinters. The whole process took a total of thirty breaths, which was so long that it would be of almost no use if he were to use it in a battle, but that was to be expected as it was still just a qi after all and was not that powerful.

The next thing that he noticed was that he felt much stronger. It was only a physical change, but it was nonetheless dramatic. He could feel that he should be about one and a half times as strong as he was compared to before the breakthrough. That was to say if he could life one hundred pounds before, he could now lift one hundred fifty.

Next, he looked at his wings, and, as per his expectation, there were a few feathers that looked as if they had been dipped in a bright red sun. Aside from that, the red feathers now had much more of the feathers covered in blood colored inner breath of hope, going so far as halfway up the feathers. Along with the changes to his wings was the change that happened to his spatial ring on his finger. He originally just expected it to have some of the color of the qi of anger flowing around it like the pearl and blood colored inner breaths. In this, he was right as now, forty five percent of the band was pearl colored, another forty five percent was deep blood colored, and ten percent of it was now a bright red. All of these colors flowed around the band of color in the middle of the black ring. However, when he looked inside the ring, he was astonished to see that it had grown in size. It was not much, only about a foot of extra space on each side, but this alone was enough to astonish Will. He knew that it had enlarged the space within the ring when he first bound it with his blood, but he did not expect the space inside to expand once again when he broke through, even if it was not much extra space.

He could not help wondering just what his heart was and why it would work in this way to improve his ring that he had bound to himself only by breaking through. After all, he knew that it would be impossible to improve the space within it even if the sect hired someone to do it as the spatial rings were a rare luxury that were usually left behind in inheritances by those who were stronger. In fact, most of the elders in the Snow Moon sect did not have a spatial ring with only the sect master and Eissa having a ring of their own. In the case of the ring which Eissa had given to him, it was merely luck that she stumbled upon it on her travels. He knew very clearly the value of the rings, and as such, he would still carry around his saber and dagger within the sheaths and carry around bags with him to collect items and would later put them in his ring. However, he currently had pretty much nothing in the ring anyway at this time with only having the mystic ice flower inside as well as some money which was given to him by Old Man Dai. He had long gotten rid of the techniques which Old Man Dai had given him as they were useless in the current environment where the immense qi everywhere suppressed everything. He had even tried out using the techniques, but they were useless and didn't do anything other than take up space.

After fully examining himself, Will got up and went into the market once again. There, he sat for a total of two hours before fully recovering the power of his heart. It was twice as fast as before now that he could sense anger much more clearly as well, and as such he could recover his heart quicker as well.

After recovering, he decided to go to one of the most important places in the sect, the martial arts pavilion.