Walking back to the dorm, Bran Ai thought about the teachings of Aakriti.
'So do I have a large bowl or a small one? I could feel the spiritual energy outside me fairly quick, but inside me not at all'
He thought back on what she said.
"Look at the pictures before you, each one represents an 'element', there's metal which is generally pale yellow-silver, wind that's a pale blue, water that's deep blue, earth that's brown, wood that's green and fire that's red, these are the basic elements that the vast majority of cultivators fall under"
The pictures represented metal as a sword, wind as the sky, water as raging tides, earth as towering mountains, wood as verdant a forest and fire burning through the forest.
"Their can be other 'elements' besides these but since none among you have such elements we will skip that, if you want to know about them feel free to read about them on your own, just know that they're variant elements that can be replicated by the base elements either way, just to a lesser extent"
Metal was technically a variant element but she included it due to how common it was.
Aakriti clapped her hands, the pictures then changed to match the element of each child.
"Now an element does not mean they are the fundamental forces of the universe, we simply use them as a means to understand ourselves and the surroundings in a manner that's easy to pass down"
Each child had their faces filled with confusion, understanding, or plain indifference.
They either understood or did not, some would take longer to understand while a few will simply get it.
"Take a look before you, the disk is displaying the elements that each of you has running through your spiritual veins. As far as we are aware a maximum of five elements can course throughout your body at any given time"
Bran Ai looked at his fire, wood, wind, metal lelements and thought it was pretty cool.
"Depending on the number of elemental energies your body requires for you to grow stronger, it will increase or decrease both the time and difficulty of casting and gathering magic" She made this point very clear.
"Take my elemental energies for example they are wind, fire and water, each of these allow me to cast spells of the same element far easier then without them. I can still cast elemental spells of earth, metal, and wood but it will take more energy and be less effective then if I had the correct attributes"
'Does that mean I can control all these things?' Bran Ai imagined for a moment, Could he soar through the wind, could he control the flowers and trees, could he set fire to the world, as for the metal... what could he do with it?
"But while it will be easier to control these elements it also becomes harder to balance them inside your body, which will slow down your growth substantially. Look at me for example, I am a triple element user and as such I require three different kinds of spiritual energies being that of water, wind and fire"
Each child looked at the number of elements inside them, some not quite getting it.
"Do you know what happens when water meets fire?" She asked expecting an answer.
"It goes... out?" One answered
"Thats right, they conflict with each other. What happens when Wind meets fire?" Once more she asked.
This time it stayed quiet.
"The fire gains strength and spreads further" she answered her own question.
"What about Water meeting wind what happens then?" She was hopeful someone knew, it was a simple question, they had personally felt it.
The kids stopped for a second to think.
"Ah I know, I know" A boy raised his hand to answer.
Aakriti looked toward the boy gesturing for him to answer.
"It gets cold!" his answer was resolute.
"Yes, it gets cold. If this wind keeps hitting the water with no warmth to keep the water flowing, the water will turn to ice. So at every moment inside my body a fire spreads, then water comes to turn it off, then wind comes to freeze it, in other areas the wind accelerates the fire, while stopping the water from calming the fire, do you know what the result of this is?"
"..."
"..."
"You burn and freeze?"
"Correct, my body is constantly going through phases of burning up too freezing over because I fail to properly balance these elemental energies inside me, If I let the fire burn too much the water could evaporate turning me to ash, if I let the water overflow it could rupture my meridians killing me, and if the wind freezes the water I could turn into an ice sculpture. In general wind is the most stable element on its own, but it is great at enhancing other elements creating hassles I have to deal with. Now what do you think happens when I take away one of these elements?"
"You don't freeze over?" Some answered questioning themselves.
"Well, yeah in a sense. They can still freeze over if they make a mistake, but in general it becomes much easier for them to balance two elements compared to three or more since they only have to pay attention to a few different outcomes. The more elements your body holds the more difficult everything becomes, the less elements you have the easier it is" Aakriti summed up.
Bran Ai looked at his elements again 'Oh fire burns wood, winds spreads fire? and what does metal do? wait doesn't this mean I can burn away!?'
Bran Ai's elemental mix could very easily cause Qi deviation, he had no way to stop a fire once it spread inside.
"Another negative affect of having too many elemental energies is the energy inside you can very easily mix due to the fact that it's so much harder to balance, this can cause your progress to slow down and all future breakthroughs will be all the more deadly" Aakriti was still not done hammering it in.
"If you have to constantly put out fires, and separate Qi don't you think it would eventually add up to many days and nights of constant worries?"
"B-but miss what does this have to do with our magic? Will this stop us from turning people into frogs?" A girl asked, she had a clear goal in mind.
"If the energy inside you is not balanced it will not be possible to use said energy to turn people into frogs, no" A wry smile appeared on Aakriti's face.
The girl looked deflated.
"So you guys probably want to know what this spiritual energy made up of all these elements is right?" Without the knowledge of what spiritual energy is, knowing all of this was simply pointless.
"Ah now that you mention it yeah"
"I didn't even think about that"
"I'm still confused"
"All of you arrived two days ago, what happened yesterday? You were taken to a room, given a stone and told to feel the energy around you and in the stone right?" She had gone through the same process, how could she not know what happened.
"Well that is spiritual energy, an almost invisible power that surrounds us like the air, it spreads on all corners of the world from the deepest sea to the highest mountain, it is the energy that gives life to all living beings as we know it"
'So that stone was spiritual energy? but it wasn't invisible like the wind, not even close' Bran Ai didn't understand this part.
"To be exact the stone you received yesterday was a sort of solidified version of spiritual energy, but if you close your eyes and concentrate you will be able to feel the spiritual energy around you in all its forms... if you have spiritual veins at least, otherwise all you feel is the surrounding environment" Aakriti laughed a little in the last part.
"Ohhh"
"I feel it"
"I don't"
"I still don't get it"
"Not everyone will feel spiritual energy the same, nor can they store the same amount of energy. Sometimes it takes many years for your body to become strong enough to store the required spiritual energy needed to preform certain spells, while other times someone will be born that can just naturally feel and store great amounts of spiritual energy" At this she paused for a second, pulling out a small bowl, large bowl, straws and a water jug.
"Think of your body like this bowl, most people start out with the little one then over time it will get bigger and bigger until it becomes a large bowl. Now the amount of energy you can store depends on the bowls size but the amount of energy you can gather depends on the openings of the straw, if you have more straws you can gather more water from the surroundings"
She dropped the water jug shattering it spilling the water inside onto the ground.
The water slowly gathered into the air and flowed into the straws.
"Now notice the amount of water that can be obtained from a single straw, its steady but rather slow right? This is what the vast majority of you are currently like, you can sorta feel the energy entering but it is not substantial enough to fill the bowl, on the other hand if you add more straws you can fill the bowl quicker but eventually it will overflow. Those of you able to feel the energy in the air have more points of entry for spiritual energy to fill your body, or your body can contain less spiritual energy it depends from person to person" Aakriti was now getting into teaching and had an easier time explaining.
"So it it a good thing to feel the energy inside us or not?" Another girl asked.
"Ah, now that's a good question. I would say if you can feel the energy within five days you will progress at a good pace, if you can feel it now it depends on the size of your bowl and number of straws, if its to small then you will struggle to advance in the future otherwise it shouldn't be a big problem" She was not going to check each childs meridians, her own energy couldn't be put in control, let alone enter another's body.
"This will be your task for the next seven days, other then coming here to learn to read, write and speak correctly, you will be gathering spiritual energy. By the end or before seven days are up we will know which it is"
With that she got up and dismissed everyone.
A rather short lesson that introduced a large amount of information to the kids, some topics they understood, others they did not.