Kifo hesitantly pressed down on his bronze badge that was significantly larger than Zilan’s, and suddenly a void door appeared before the trio.
“How?…How could he have found it? This is beyond odd.” thought Kifo as he stared at Zilan in both wonderment and slight annoyance.
“Would you mind telling me how you found the sacred grounds?” asked Kifo.
Zilan met his gaze as he said,
“If I tell you then you must agree to help me with something.”
Without giving it a thought Kifo immediately nodded,
“Fine.”
“Good! All I can say is that you are not the only one with special abilities.” laughed Zilan.
Despite the vagueness of those words Kifo’s eyes still widened. A thought that he had always doubted, never completely believing in, suddenly appeared in his mind again but this time for different reasons.
“Is something wrong?” asked Zilan.
“It’s nothing. We should get going.”
Directly after speaking those words, Kifo stepped into the void door and soon after so did Zilan and Jeza.
When they stepped out, Zilan found himself in a rather large court yard that had all manner of intriguing plant life and insects.
In the centre of the courtyard was a medium sized cottage that had four large and peculiar patterns drawn around it. They were constantly throbbing with golden light just like a heart does when it beats, pumping blood to the rest of the body.
“This is?” inquired Zilan as he took in the scenery.
“Huh, yes,…this is my family’s sacred land. I need to go alert Father that you’re here so feel free to go inside. Also, you have about an hour of daylight left so use that time to absorb and familiarize yourself with Brivata’s universe energy.
I’ll be back soon.”
After saying that Kifo once again pressed on his bronze badge and a void door appeared. He then walked into it, leaving Zilan and Jeza alone in the courtyard.
“This is Brivata! Is it what you’d imagined it to be?” smiled Zilan as he looked toward Jeza.
“That…isn’t as easy to answer as you might think. This place and what we were told as children, it’s like they’re two completely different places.”
“Oh! What exactly were you told?”
“Exactly what we wanted to hear. ‘In Brivata no one goes hungry, In Brivata there is no needless killing, In Brivata everyone is equal and everyone is happy’
However not even an hour since we arrived here and talk of protecting ourselves from dangers has already begun.
It’s honestly funny, when I think about the difference between the thoughts I had coming in here and what I’m thinking now.”
Zilan didn’t find it difficult to relate to Jeza’s mindset at all. However there exists a big difference between relating to something and understanding the other parties feelings.
“What are you thinking now?”
“I’m thinking that this is probably the most fitting version of ‘paradise’ for my species. After all what’s a little more suffering at the hands of your own people when compared to what we endure from humans? At least maybe here, I’m not a walking treasure.”
For some unexplainable reason, Zilan felt no remorse when he listened to Jeza’s words and it was clear that it wasn’t the work of the Gift of love influencing him.
“Strange.”
He took notice of this but didn’t know what to make of it. Little did he know that he was actually adapting and unknowingly because of his inhuman constitution, his body was somehow absorbing the Universe energy around him just from breathing in and out, although on a much, much, much smaller scale than when he was absorbing the ginseng.
This was causing his mental strength to grow slowly but substantially, and given the warnings from Kifo, Zilan’s mind and body were subconsciously putting on guards against everything including both emotional and physical impact. Preparing for anything!
Was this fortuitous discovery something amazing to possess or will it prove to be a hindrance as it develops further? Only time will tell.
“Hmm, from what I see Beasts share more things in common with humans than I was led to believe. Anyway, talking about this is meaningless let’s head inside. There are some things I’d like to try out.”
Jeza was confused as to whether that was an insult or a statement stemming from an insight. Regardless, she made sure to remember it.
Zilan calmly walked up the stone steps, opened the door to the cottage and walked in. Inside looked very much like what you’d expect an old man’s house to look like. There was old furniture and in some places none at all, the rooms had a distinct medicinal smell, but the thing that stood out the most was a large prayer mat with similar patterns as those on the outside of the building laid out in the sitting room.
Two stars appeared in his eyes as Zilan examined the prayer mat.
“Interesting….so this pattern has the ability to draw in and store all of the Universe’s power it can handle.”
“But what if I modified it to direct the energy to me? I can’t be the only one who’s thought of this, can I?”
As Zilan continued to analyze the prayer mat, Jeza saw no purpose for her presence there so she looked for a vacant room she could rest in and went inside.
Zilan on the other hand didn’t hesitate to sit on the prayer mat.
“This….”
His meridians enlarged to the point that they could be seen from outside his skin however, Zilan felt no pain or discomfort. In fact, he had never in his life felt so refreshed.
The power that was going through him, gave him a strange feeling of , “This is right. This is how it’s supposed to be.”
The Universe power that came flowing down from the skies of Brivata differed greatly from the energy he had absorbed from the ginseng.
After all, the ginseng was the same as Zilan now. It had once absorbed the universe’s energy directly from the sky. Therefore, the energy it contained obviously fell behind that of Brivata in terms of purity.
This was because Brivata’s Universe’s energy had much fewer impurities than those contained in the ginseng.
There was also a much simpler reason as to why Zilan was responding so well to Brivata’s energy and that was because of his Inhuman constitution.
Zilan’s body was designed to be able to contain the purest of Universe energy, therefore absorbing it somewhat directly from the Universe was simply a natural occurrence.
Unfortunately as Zilan was happily taking in all of the Universe energy he could, the patterns around the cottage suddenly ceased to glow.
Night had fallen and as per the rules no one was allowed to absorb the Universe’s energy.
Just as he was feeling down on why he couldn’t absorb more, Zilan turned to his wrist and saw that one mark of tribulation had shed off and the remaining one was noticeably fading.
“It looks like coming here was an even wiser choice than I thought it would be.” laughed Zilan.
“Hmm, what’s so funny?” The door to the cottage opened and in came Kifo with a small smile on his face.
“Nothing, I’m just starting to like this place.” Replied Zillan as he stood up.
“I should hope so, this place is our sacred land.” chuckled Kifo.
“What’s wrong with this person? One moment he appears shocked beyond words and now he’s here laughing with me.”
“Ah! That reminds me, what is the nature of the favour I owe you?”
“It’s very simple, I only want you to assist in my training.”
