Awakening the Divine Spark

It hurt, and it hurt a lot.

Lee guessed that his first impulse might be to vomit the spark out, or even try to cut it from his chest directly from how much pain he might find himself in. That is why he didn’t bring along anything that he could hurt himself with. And now he regretted that.

The moment he swallowed the spark, scorching pain paralyzed him, and he convulsed on the floor in agony, feeling how he was getting burnt alive. Lee felt every cell in his body burning and the worst part was that there was no going back.

Before attempting this ridiculous plan, his idea was that he could use the elemental particles of the earth spark to mostly neutralize the effect of fire, kind of subjugate it, but the water spark would heal him up, soothing the potential pain.

Turns out he couldn’t do shit. Not only he couldn’t concentrate because of the scorching agony, he felt he barely maintained bits of sanity. And the worst of all was that he couldn’t pass out no matter how hard he tried.

He couldn’t control his extremities, and not even fingers. He couldn’t blink or breathe for that matter, but at the same time he had no ways to lose consciousness. He couldn’t even scream to alleviate the pain a bit, and the best thing he could manage was to make gurgling sounds that more resembled those of a person dying.

It was terrifying to realize he was about to burn to death like this, and even witness the whole process no matter how long it lasted.

And it seemed eternal. Lee had no clue how long he convulsed in agony, but those seemed to be the longest days of his life. Until he couldn’t finally move, but he was still conscious and, as it turns out, it began to hurt even more.

He was in too much pain and too tired to curse himself or the retarded idea. He couldn’t even force out a thought of that carried a tinge of regret. His revenge or his ambitions didn’t become laughable at the face of a larger struggle – he didn’t have anything besides the agony. For a while it became his world.

***

When the two months were over, the door to Lee’s room slowly opened and the junior elder on duty threw a glance in, verifying whether the disciple wasn’t at a crucial stage and could be disturbed. He sighed seeing Lee lying on the floor, half naked with torn clothing, and went to check the boy’s vitals.

Fortunately he was alive, his breathing deep and regular. It was hard to tell the reasons for his looks, but everything else indicated the guy was simply asleep.

Few days later Lee woke up in his room. He stared at the ceiling for a while, but didn’t go on making promises for the future, fault himself for the moronic idea or delve into self-pity or ridicule. He knew everything that could be said or thought, thus, after a pause and taking few deep breaths, sat up, and focused on his abdomen.

As expected, in his Dantian there were three objects now, forming a neat equilateral triangle. All three had clouds of elemental particles revolving around them – blue, yellow and red respectively. They did look pretty, but to become a Christmas tree was not the reason why he went through all the struggle.

Lee focused on the water particles first, and they happily obliged his guidance and ran a loop around his body. He circled them through the right arm into the left, then back in the Dantian and instantly felt refreshed by the simple move.

The earth particles were similarly responsive, but to make things more interesting, he sent a stream of particles to each of his palms, and then clapped together, creating a sound of two rocks colliding.

’So far so good.’ Lee said to himself.

This was how far he had gotten in the elemental manipulation before going to the Ascension tower and it was great to see he hadn’t lost his touch or the level of comprehension he worked so hard to achieve.

Then he turned to the fire spark. He observed it for a moment, and then intended to guide a handful of fire particles to his hand, but the sensation of a flare of heat in his abdomen forced him to groan in pain. Moreover, him trying to focus on the fire spark caused a burning pain in his mind, almost like someone had ignited a bonfire inside of him.

Lee didn’t expect to be capable of wielding fire right away, but seeing what the side effects were, finally forced him to feel regret.

’Alright!’ He said to himself, still refusing to fault himself, ’Ignoring the rest ... just one thing ... never again!’

He knew he didn’t sound too convincing ... well ... it was hard to believe himself at all, especially sensing the numbness in his own mind – the side effect of what he went through.

From the looks of it, he’ll have to practice hard to be capable of using the fire particles, but he was fine with that part. The cultivation process was actually something he loved the more he practiced it. The problem was the lack of time.

Right! The time!

Lee had no clue how long he was out, thus he threw on some clothes, rushed outside and washed himself. Then, after a light meal, went to the library to continue his duties.

He completely ignored Junior Elder Chen’s displeasure and with a straight face resumed from where he had left. In the canteen he found out that only a bit more than two months had passed – basically the period that he initially expected.

***

From that day on Lee’s approach slightly changed.

He still did the regular exercises and worked in the library. But in the arena he began to seek out all the thirteen and fourteen year old outer disciples and invite them for a friendly spar. He didn’t know who would be picked for the competition, but he was planning to learn everything about the potential opponents during the time he still had.

No one in his age group knew they would be the ones competing this year and thus didn’t try to hide their abilities. It was easy to quickly point out the most talented youths – as expected, they were also the most hard working.

There were no mind games involved in the friendly spars and everyone tried their best. And that allowed Lee to happily note everyone’s skills, strengths and preferred tactics, creating a small book for himself to study.

Lee quickly recognized that if there were no unexpected surprises, he was capable of dealing with the most of the kids. The one real challenge was Jian Tianyu. The guy was following in his brother’s steps and was becoming a fearsome little monster.

He was friendly, though, and happily accepted Lee’s suggestion to become his regular sparring partner.

From the very start Lee knew that his chances of defeating Tianyu in the tournament were thirty percent at best, but he kind of hoped to pull the you owe me one card.

***

The big addition to Lee’s training became the evening runs to the outskirts of the sect, to the woods south-west of the sect.

To cultivate during the night was not enough to guarantee him killing Victoria – he needed to be actually capable of blasting her apart or at least doing lethal damage in other any way. In order to do that he began practicing the one-thrust killing technique using Soulcleaver.

At first he was reluctant to show the sword in public, but after he tried to direct slight bursts of fire particles in sticks that should’ve represented a sword, they simply blew up, injuring him in the process. He didn’t want to experiment with the Soulcleaver’s replica Han Li crafted since it could have similar fate, thus using Soulcleaver became his only option.

Lee wasn’t too unhappy about it. The slim sword was so heavy he could barely lift it, and it became obvious he had to work hard to use it. And it was fun. He even had the illusion of the sword being tailor-made specifically for him, it felt so perfect in his hand.

And forty days into his training his thrusts had surpassed Xiao Lian’s.

There was only one downside. Every time he used the fire element, he felt burning pain in his Dantian, accompanied by the sensation that his sword hand was about to explode. Although he didn’t suffer any lasting damage, the pain was enough to be uncomfortable, but it healed overnight thanks to the water spark.