A splash woke YunYun up from her shock when Nick jumped in the water with his clothes still on. She wanted to run over to the river, but Steven stopped her, "Don't worry about him. He can easily stay under water for twenty minutes. Who knows maybe even more than half an hour."
YunYun watched the quick river in the darkness while Steven told her how Nick 'invented' underwater goggles and fins for them to have fun while diving and how the royal fishermen became a Qi master after the age of sixty practicing Nick's underwater Qi technique. All of this sounded unbelievable, but YunYun was worried about something else entirely.
'I have to practice real hard to keep up with him!' She clenched her fists hard and tried to calm down.
Ten or so minutes later everyone heard Nick's excited voice, "YunYun! It was great. Listen, if you're not tired, can you tell me your opinion on this meditation technique?"
"Nick." Clayton interrupted the excited youth, "We are going to sleep, you take the first watch, just keep it quiet. Girls are really tired."
Nick awkwardly apologized and pulled the stupefied YunYun further away from their little camp. Then they sat on the shore for three more hours while Nick explained his meditation technique and listened to YunYun's thoughts and experiences.
Finally he tried to resist the impulse to continue through the night and returned to the camp. Actually YunYun wasn't tired at all and would've kept going, but she also understood they had to have a good rest.
To calm down completely, Nick quietly cleaned up what was left from dinner and then woke up Clayton to switch with him. He passed out almost instantly, but was still smiling. The revelations he had tonight were priceless and would tremendously help him in the future.
Unexpectedly for him, this time Nick slept for a long time and woke up only when the sun was high up. Actually all of them, besides Steven, who had the morning watch, slept like pigs and woke up at the same time when they collectively got hungry.
In addition to light breakfast, Nick boiled a fragrant herbal tea that should provide everyone extra energy and help against fatigue during the day. Then he stared at the four girls for a while until they almost got uncomfortable. Nick didn't pay attention to their reactions, but took out his mortar and pestle and started grinding something once again.
Others were used to him being a bit weird, but YunYun watched his actions with great interest. When she asked what he was preparing, he told her it was a 'medieval sunblock'.
After Nick was finished, he checked the yellowish paste, put it on his hand and rubbed a bit. Then smiled in satisfaction and called the girls over.
"Smear this on your skin on the parts exposed to the sun during the day, including your faces. It might look strange and it has a weird flavor, but you won't get any sunburn and after a while your skin will gain a natural resistance against it. You should use this today while there are no other people around. Imagine, if we suddenly have to play mercenaries and find ourselves in a desert again – you might have serious problem if you can't show yourselves in the sun or someone else sees your tender skin, right? This paste will solve that problem."
Girls looked at the paste inside the mortar with a great deal of skepticism, but finally YunYun picked it up and started to cover herself with it.
"There is no mirror here, please smear it on my head." She turned towards Nick.
He murmured something about her poor choice of words again, but still covered her bold head and white neck with it. Unwillingly, following the YunYun's example, others did the same. Conny called Steven over to help her and Beata and Kate took care of each other.
Ten minutes later they were in the boat, while the faces of the girls were in an unhealthy yellowish color. Nick got this idea only because he saw how after yesterday few parts of their skin was already getting burns. While he didn't care much when Steven had them during their trip to Olava, the girls were much more sensitive. A bad burn could seriously impede their movement and a bad heatstroke might completely stop the advancement of the whole group.
The girls understood it as well, therefore only mumbled something grudgingly, but still complied.
Till noon there were no changes to the river or their surroundings and the group gradually became confused. On average the boat was faster than the horses when coming to Olava, but there were still regular forests around them and no jungle, and that meant they were still on the plateau.
"Shouldn't we be further away from the capital than Sutana was?" Steven asked perplexed.
"Most definitely." Clayton agreed, "Even though there are no landmarks to point out our position, we have covered almost double the distance. Despite twists and turns the river has, we are steadily going towards the south east and I can't explain why we are still on the plateau. The road we rode on the horses continuously went up and that was one of the reasons we slowed down. But now, not only the stream is fast, we are even paddling constantly."
'Damn it! If I had a math major I could've calculated our speed and the covered distance, but now I don't even know where and how to start.' Nick was a bit upset with himself.
"Couldn't you calculate our position last night from the stars or something?" He asked Clayton.
"Hahaha!" The latter laughed, "Not only I don't have any equipment here for that, but don't tell me you haven't noticed? Since we arrived to the Paradise city the starts are different from those we have in Mainland. I couldn't calculate even if I had my equipment."
"Oh! We are on the southern hemisphere?!" Nick realized.
The maps he had seen so far were obviously incomplete, including the 'world maps' in the Holy Order and the Sun kingdom. He was confident that there existed at least one or two more continents between the Dragon isles and the Eastern continent on the opposite side of the world, it was just that the people have not been capable of reaching those or there was no way to come back for some reason and therefore the current civilization didn't know about them. This was the same reason no one had sailed around the world yet. Thus, the medieval understanding of the world was quite archaic and Nick never even tried to explain to anyone why earth is moving around the Sun and not the other way around.
"Southern hemisphere? What's that?" YunYun was curious about the new term.
"Sorry, that's just random term on the Nestri continent." Nick realized his mistake, "It means that the further south we go, the colder it will get. Maybe at the very south they have similar climate to our Aurora."
"Wait! Do you hear that?" Clayton interrupted their chat.
"Huh?" Everyone in the boat got startled.
While being the only Qi master in the group it was only normal for him to have the best hearing and eyesight, therefore the six pairs of eyes looked at him with questioning gazes waiting for an explanation.
"Something is wrong!" Clayton looked at the front where the river took it's next curve.
"Do you hear any rapids?" Nick asked.
They considered this before, after all the river somehow had to flow down from the plateau.
"No, it's a weird 'swooshing' sound. Listen, you should be able to hear it as well. Everyone, silent!" Clayton commanded.
All of them tried to listen and Nick seemed to hear something indistinct, when he noticed that the river became faster and faster.
"Let's try to get to shore and check it first." He said as the boat took the turn along with the river for them to only see … nothing. Couple of hundred meters ahead the river 'ended' and there was nothing except for the blue sky with few clouds in it.
"Grab on that rock and try to hold the boat!" Nick's shout woke Clayton up from stupor and he saw the youth dashing over the quick current with the stunned YunYun in his hands.
Clayton looked ahead and immediately understood Nick's idea. There was a rock in the water in the middle of the river, dividing the stream in two. The rock wasn't big, maybe in a size of a bucket or two, at least the part that was above the water.
It wasn't possible for them to get to the shore on time while paddling and with Nick's ability they could carry everyone to the safety, but Clayton had to hold on for quite some time.
"No one moves! Keep the boat steady!" He loudly ordered and his natural captain's charisma immediately worked as a charm.
The girls, still horrified, squatted in the middle of the boat and Steven sat down as well. Clayton straightened the boat a bit and few seconds later grabbed the rock with one hand while holding on to the boat with the other.
At this moment Nick was already few meters from the shore and unceremoniously threw his precious load towards the trees and, without looking back, darted over the water again. The biggest problem was that with the river being so fast, he couldn't run perpendicularly to the stream, but had to run against it, therefore the time spend on the seemingly short distance increased exponentially.
Half a minute later he was close to the boat, but there was no safe way of taking someone out of it. He jumped over and landed on the small, wet rock.
"Conny! Hand!" He shouted.
Probably because he had so many briefings and practices in the tower, she immediately complied and stretched out her hand. Nick immediately grabbed it and pulled her up on the rock and then in his arms right after. Not lingering around he darted over the water again towards the place where he dropped his own fiancee.
After throwing his friend's wife away as well, he returned to grab the next one. While picking up Kate, he noticed that the color on Clayton's face was turning from bright red to white. It was not easy to hold several hundred kilograms that the current was pulling away just by a simple grab to a wet rock. His Qi expenditure had to be enormous.
"I'll help you on the next pick-up!" Nick shouted and darted away again.
When he came back, Clayton managed to squish through his teeth, "Just take the next!"
"Open your mouth!" Nick already had an open potion in his hand and poured its content in the stupefied Clayton's mouth. A part of the precious fluid splashed on his cheeks, but no one cared.
When Nick came back the last time, he grabbed Steven's hand and pulled him on the slippery rock. Right after Clayton released the boat that without any sound disappeared from their eyes falling down the waterfall.
"Just how high are we?" Clayton said while angrily panting.
This was too close and only Nick's quick reaction saved them this time. But the danger was over and holding on became easy without any additional weight. He even felt refreshed when he let the boat go and jumped in the water while still holding on to the small rock Nick and Steven stood on.
"Take another one." Nick passed another potion, "Steven, lets go!"
He didn't want to carry Steven in his arms like the girls and his friend jumped on his back with face that had 'not again!' written all over it. Clayton drank the potion and followed them soon after.
When they all were safe on the shore, Nick glanced around at the lifeless faces and laughed, "How about it? Who still doesn't want to practice?" Only to receive an irritated kick to his butt.
"Today you'll teach me how can a Qi practitioner walk on water!" YunYun glared at him.
"Alright, alright! Just don't be angry!" Nick waved his hands defensively.
'Sigh, really! One like the other.' Clayton shook his head and looked around. All were fine, so there was no reason to panic anymore. They had to calm down and figure out the next step, just like they always did.