Stone Will

8

And he had to be strong, in order to be able to discover them all, to be free from the shackles of his fate. He had to be much stronger than his father and mother, and much more powerful than his uncle.

His first goal was ‘the Black Gates’ sect, and in order to get there, he needed to reach the eighth stage of the Bodily Rivers by the age of sixteen. How could he do that, with the meager resources of the Kingdom? He would succeed only if all of those limited resources were devoted to his personal cultivation.

And so, Hadjar gave the order to his neural network and it projected the map onto the parchment. Of course, the projection was only visible to Hadjar himself, but it was enough for him to start tracing the contours with the quill.

“That’s incredible,” Nanny exhaled.

“This child can’t speak, but he can understand us,” South Wind seemed to be surprised, too. “Tell me, disciple, what change will you get if you pay two hundred gold coins for a sword worth one hundred and eighty.”

“Scholar, don’t joke,” the Master spoke for the first time. “He can’t possibly know about…”

Hadjar slapped his face mentally. He had never gone to school, but if the same ‘smart’ questions were asked there, it wasn’t surprising at all that very few people liked to go to school.

He raised ten fingers. The people sighed disappointedly, and then sank back into their chairs, stunned.

Hadjar had squeezed his fingers and spread them again.

“... this,” the Master finished his sentence, incredulous.

“Where can you find the Grass of Seventeen Rays?”

That time, no one tried to argue with the Scholar. And they were very surprised when the Prince pointed his finger at the correct hill on the map he’d drawn earlier.

“How many grams of this herb and how many grams of the Old Soul Powder would it take to make a cure for the Blue Scorpion poison?”

That question was so complex that the King, Queen or the Nanny wouldn’t have known the answer. Only the Master and the Scholar knew what the correct answer was.

Hadjar knew the answer to that question, too, or, rather, the neural network did. He was very pleased with the fact that the neural network recorded not only books, but also the lectures he’d overheard. Fortunately, South Wind had given a lecture on this topic just a month ago.

“Amazing,” the Master gasped, when he saw two fingers of one hand and four of the other raised.

“It seems, your Highness, that the heavens have blessed you with a genius.”

Everyone was silent, and Hadjar was looking at the Master. They used to say, back on Earth, that if a young man wanted to get a beautiful girl in bed, he needed to get closer to her friends first.

No, the Prince wasn’t going to sleep with the Master, but the path to his discipleship was through the South Wind’s lectures.

“What do you say, dear?” Elizabeth asked the King.

“Esteemed South Wind,” the King addressed the old man meaningfully, “are you really going to take Hadjar as your student?”

The old man nodded. “He’ll be my first disciple in the last two thousand years that I’ve been alive.”

Well, the old man’s two thousand years old. Nothing surprising there. Hadjar thought sarcastically; he no longer doubted that this was a different world entirely.

“Analyze,” he ordered, looking at South Wind.

[The request is being processed… The request has been processed. The table is being generated]

Name

South Wind

Level of cultivation

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Strength

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Dexterity

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Physique

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Energy points

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[The request cannot be processed... There is insufficient data for an analytical comparison]

“It’s settled, then,” Haver nodded. “From this day onward, you can visit Hadjar’s apartments at any time convenient to you.”

“But, pardon the intrusion,” Elizabeth added suddenly. “Nanny will be present during your classes.

At first, South Wind wanted to argue that his knowledge couldn’t be shared with the clumsy old lady as well, but then he looked into those clear, blue eyes. Those weren’t the eyes of an ordinary child.

Was the Scholar that eager to become one of the teachers of a future luminary of the Sacraments? Well, he could make the sacrifice and let Nanny attend his classes as well.

That was the beginning of Hadjar’s studies. That was how his devious plan was set in motion.

Another year of Hadjar's life passed. At the banquet organized to celebrate his birthday, he was introduced to his future... wife. She was only four days old. The Prince, to put it mildly, had been shocked, even though he’d already known that these kinds of marriages were quite a normal thing amongst the nobility.

The girl was the daughter of the head of a large Trade Cartel. Well, ‘large’ by the standards of the Kingdom. But South Wind had said that the merchant fleet numbering seven hundred ships was a beggarly business.

Fortunately, in addition to his wife, the Prince was also presented with a good amount of all sorts of other ‘things’. Well, Hadjar called them ‘things’. Scholars would call them very pathetic artifacts. However, all these swords, bows, sabers, books, etc. were at the level of Mortal artifacts. The next level were Spiritual artifacts, which would’ve cost almost as much as the entire Royal Palace.

No wonder that only Haver and Primus had those. Each of them owned a special Spiritual blade. Hadjar didn’t know yet how artifacts differed in the power they could exert (the neuronet had again complained about having too small an amount of data to work with—a useless piece of iron), but he was definitely going to find out.

Actually, that was one of the questions that he was going to ask South Wind in the near future. Fortunately, he’d learned the local language six months ago and could now speak it fluently. And he’d learned to read quite well.

The Scholar complained that, despite his genius, learning to speak and read had taken Hadjar too much time. Well, of course it had. In comparison to the earthly ones, these local squiggles had little resemblance to a normal language. Who knew how long it would’ve taken him without the help of the neuronet.

Now, swinging his legs, Hadjar was sitting in the corridor with his father, uncle and a dozen warriors. Each of them was able to lift a stone that weighed 700 pounds, throw a spear four hundred yards and split a thick oak with their sword.

The main thing was to get a good sword.

They were at the fourth stage of the Bodily Rivers.

Previously, Hadjar had thought they were insanely strong. But memories of his time on Earth faded more and more over time, with the help of South Wind’s lectures. Now, Hadjar knew that a Heavenly Soldier wasn’t the pinnacle of cultivation. Stronger cultivators existed.