Undercurrents

After the awakening ceremony ended, Starfall Town buzzed with excitement all day.

In teahouses, on the ridges between fields, and beside the wells, everyone was talking about the Long family's boy. Some envied them, saying blue smoke must have risen from Long Tieshan's ancestral graves, and that he would likely become the father of a venerable Soul Master. Others were jealous and muttered sourly that Twin Martial Souls sounded frightening, but the boy might not live long. More were curious, wanting to see what the two dragons actually looked like. More neighbors came "visiting" the Long family's smithy than in the whole previous year put together.

Long Tieshan turned them all away, saying only that the child was tired and needed rest, and shut the door tight.

Inside, Long Tian sat cross-legged on the bed, his hands resting palms up on his knees. He had just learned the most basic meditation method from Deacon Lin Feng and was trying to sense the two powers within him that felt both strange and familiar. After closing his eyes and concentrating for a while, he indeed detected two utterly different vortices of Qi in his dantian. One was warm and vast, as though he were holding a small sun; the other was icy and profound, as though he were clutching a piece of ten-thousand-year-old ice. A barely perceptible boundary lay between them. They kept to their own waters, neither encroaching on the other, yet each made its presence impossible to ignore.

"Light..." He tried directing his attention toward the golden glow. The golden vortex trembled slightly, and a warm current surged along his meridians toward his right palm. He opened his eyes and looked down. Several tiny golden scales flickered in and out of sight on the back of his right hand, gleaming softly in the dim room. He clenched his fist and felt as though that hand had grown a little stronger.

"What about the dark one?" He turned his attention to the left. The black vortex gave a sudden lurch, and an icy power carrying a slight sting shot into his left arm. Dark scales emerged on the back of his left hand, and even the air around it seemed to grow colder for a moment.

"Hey!" Long Tian raised both hands excitedly, gold and black shining against each other on either side. He tried to bring the two lights together, like the dragon in his dream-but the moment his hands came within an inch of each other, the two powers violently exploded! Agony shot from his chest straight to the crown of his head, as though someone had plunged a red-hot iron spike into his organs! He grunted and fell onto the bed. The scales on both hands vanished at once, and cold sweat instantly soaked his undershirt.

"Tian!" His mother heard the commotion and rushed in. When she saw how deathly pale her son was, tears streamed down her face. "What's wrong? Where does it hurt? Husband! Husband, come quickly!"

Long Tieshan rushed into the room in great strides and scooped up his son. He pressed a rough, broad hand to the boy's pulse, but could feel nothing, and the veins on his forehead throbbed with anxiety. Fortunately, after Long Tian rested for a while, color gradually returned to his face. He tugged at the corners of his mouth and forced a smile. "Father, Mother, I'm fine... the two powers were just fighting. Now that they're done, it doesn't hurt anymore."

"Fighting?" Long Tieshan's brows twisted into knots. "Have you forgotten what the deacon said? Light and darkness counter each other. If you force them together, something terrible will happen!"

Long Tian lowered his head and bit his lip. Of course he remembered what Lin Feng had said, but a stubborn thought kept nagging at him. Since they're both inside my body, why can't they get along? Those two dragons even flew together in my dream!

That night, after his parents had gone to sleep, Long Tian secretly climbed out of bed and tiptoed into the courtyard. The cold moonlight shone on the old persimmon tree, spreading silver-white light across the ground. Standing in the tree's shadow, he closed his eyes again and carefully roused both powers at once. He had learned his lesson this time. Instead of letting them draw close, he guided them separately to his hands. Golden scales emerged on his right hand, while black scales covered his left. In the moonlight, his hands looked as though they were wearing translucent gloves, one gold and one black.

"Phew..." He let out a murky breath. This time, it didn't hurt. Although the sensation of one arm being hot and the other cold was strange, at least nothing had gone wrong. He raised his right hand and slapped a scrap iron billet in the corner of the courtyard. With a muffled thud, five shallow finger marks appeared on the fist-sized billet! That was iron! The pig iron his father used for smithing every day!

Long Tian's eyes widened. He looked down at his right hand, then at the finger-marked billet, his heart pounding faster and faster. He raised his left palm and pressed it gently against another billet. Sizzle! A thin layer of white frost appeared on its surface, as though it had been frozen all night.

He was so excited he nearly cried out. The light dragon power contained searing heat and fierce strength, while the dark dragon power held cold darkness and corrosion. Both were good things! He only had to keep them from touching! Just as he was about to try again, the door creaked open.

"Tian, still not asleep?"

Long Tian hurriedly hid his hands behind his back and looked around. His father stood in the doorway with a coat draped over his shoulders, his shadow stretched long by the moonlight. Long Tieshan walked over, glanced at the hands behind his son's back, then looked at the two altered pieces of scrap iron in the corner. He was silent for a long while.

"Tomorrow," he began, his voice muffled, "Scholar Wang in town wrote a letter of recommendation to the junior Soul Master academy in neighboring Bluestone Town. I asked him to write another one. Tian, we're poor and can't afford to send you to a Soul Master academy in a big city, but as for Bluestone Town's junior academy, I'll smash every pot and sell every piece of iron we own to send you there."

Long Tian opened his mouth. "Bluestone Town... is it far?"

"Ten li. You can walk there in a shichen." Long Tieshan crouched down so father and son were eye to eye. "At the academy, teachers will teach you to control your Soul Power. They'll have a way to deal with the light and darkness fighting. You've got more promise than your father, so don't waste the abilities you've got."

Looking at the weighty expectations in his father's eyes, Long Tian nodded firmly. "Father, don't worry. I'll definitely study hard!"

Long Tieshan grinned, reached out to rub his son's head, then got up and went back inside. As he turned his back on Long Tian, his smile faded and his brows furrowed again. He had seen it just now: the intertwined golden and black light on the two hands behind his son's back. Though he knew nothing about Soul Power, he had distinctly sensed something dangerous. When the two powers were quiet, they left each other alone, but once they lost their balance... he didn't dare imagine it.

Perhaps sending Tian away was the best choice.

Over the next few days, Long Tieshan scraped together what he could. He sold one of the family's pigs, two baskets of their autumn harvest, and the few good pieces of iron he had saved from his smithing, letting them go for a pittance before he finally had enough for the junior Soul Master academy's tuition and books. Long Tian's mother stayed up through the night sewing him a new garment, a coarse blue cloth shirt with stitches close enough to keep out the wind. She also lined it with a layer of soft cotton, saying she was afraid it would be cold at the academy.

On the morning of his departure, the early mist had yet to fully disperse. The streets of Starfall Town were deserted. Now and then, someone peered out and saw Long Tian leaving with a bundle on his back, only to draw their head back inside. Those gazes hid behind windows and in cracks between doors, some curious, others carrying an indefinable distance.

Long Tieshan saw his son off beneath the old locust tree at the edge of town, leaving its shadow behind him. He crouched down and straightened Long Tian's collar one last time, his voice hoarse. "When you get to the academy, listen to your teachers. Get along with your classmates, and don't fight. On your rest day each month, I'll come and take you home."

"Mm." Long Tian nodded hard. His nose prickled, but he held back his tears.

After mother and son exchanged a few more intimate words, Long Tian shouldered his bundle and headed east along the dirt road. A few steps later, he looked back. His parents were still standing beneath the tree, waving to him, and his mother was already wiping away tears. He walked a few more steps and looked back again. The old locust tree was growing smaller and smaller, and his parents' figures were becoming ever more indistinct.

He took a deep breath, turned around, and strode forward. The morning mist parted, and sunlight spilled warmly over his shoulders. He touched his chest, where a small protective charm his mother had sewn rested against him, wrapped around a pinch of leaves from the old locust tree. He clenched his fist and thought, Bluestone Town Junior Soul Master Academy, here I come.

Meanwhile, on the official road between Starfall Town and Spirit City, a snow-white steed was galloping toward the town. A youth of about fourteen or fifteen rode on its back, dressed in a silver-white brocade robe. An exquisite jade pendant hung at his waist, carved with a pattern of a longsword crossed with a star. His face was stern, his eyes sharp as an eagle's, and his black hair streamed behind him in the wind.

He reined in his horse at the edge of town, swung down, and stopped an elderly farmer carrying a hoe. His tone was indifferent but polite. "May I ask whether a child awakened twin dragon Martial Souls at the town's Martial Soul Awakening ceremony today?"

The old farmer was momentarily stunned by his presence, then nodded haltingly. "Y-yes. Old Long's boy. He went toward Bluestone Town, not long ago."

The white-robed youth's eyes flickered, and the corners of his mouth curled into an inscrutable smile. He swung back onto his horse, turned it around, and pursued Long Tian.

The sound of hoofbeats faded into the distance, leaving yellow dust rising along the road. The old farmer watched the direction in which the youth had disappeared and muttered, "Which family's young master is this one from..."

In the distance, toward Bluestone Town, cooking smoke curled into the air, and a compound with gray tiles and white walls emerged faintly in the morning light. A plaque hung above its gate, bearing seven large characters:

Bluestone Town Junior Soul Master Academy.