He kicked off the ground and used his best strike, the ‘Flowing Stream’. The stick in his hands moved like a hungry, poisonous snake. With every inch it covered between them, its tip changed direction. It seemed like it was aimed at Hadjar’s throat, heart, groin, and right thigh simultaneously.
Despite their difference in age and strength, the Master had repeatedly knocked the Princess out with this strike. No one who hadn’t fought in hundreds of battles could resist-
A sharp crack echoed across the parade ground and the stunned Master recoiled when his stick slammed into the wooden blade. Hadjar attacked then. The sword energy spun around his legs. The light evening breeze turned into a hurricane wind.
The old man thought he could see the ghostly silhouette of a dragon flying through the sky behind the young man. A moment later, a strike that felt like that same dragon’s fang, glittering with a steel light, cut through the ground next to the Master. It parted the sands and then continued on into the sky.
Everything stopped. There was only silence.
The Master understood that even if he were ten times stronger and more experienced, he wouldn’t survive under the onslaught of this power. However, it wasn’t even a matter of brute strength, but of skill.
The old man doubted that even Heaven Soldiers following the Way of the Sword could’ve replicated this strike armed with merely a single wooden sword. However, the young man hadn’t reached the peak of swordsmanship yet. His weapon couldn’t withstand the strain and crumbled into sawdust to be immediately carried off by the wind.
“Please, Honorable Master,” Hadjar bowed again, standing at a distance from the old man, “forgive my ignorance.”
“Then accept my strike, you brazen little boy.”
He swung the stick again and scarlet blood fell to the sand. The blow had hit him right in the face, damaging his nose and upper lip. Hadjar hadn’t taken even a single step to the side, hadn’t released any energy, and hadn’t used the Technique that strengthened his body. That one blow could never compare to the years of pain and humiliation that had become the Master’s fate.
The old man recoiled again. He looked at the young man standing in front of him, eyes wide with shock. In recent years, he hadn’t left the parade ground and the Princess had been the only one to ever talk to him, but she’d rarely spoken about the ‘outside world’.
That’s why he’d presumed that this young man in rags was another disrespectful scion of the nobles. However, none of them would be able to move more silently than a summer breeze and then accept a humiliating blow obediently.
Their eyes met. The old man’s heart skipped a beat. He’d already seen these eyes on the day a little boy had fearlessly accepted his challenge and had slowly begun to move a whole barrel of water, cup by cup. These eyes were full of unyielding determination that could split the Earth and bring down the Heavens.
“Master,” Hadjar bowed once more and left the parade ground.
The old man stood still for some time, looking at Hadjar’s back. A quarter of an hour later, he returned to the extension that had become his home. There was nothing in there except for an old, rugged training dummy, a bed, and an ancient sword that had long since become blunt.
For the first time in a decade, the Master took it off the wall. He laid it on the floor, knelt down, and rested his forehead on the rusted blade. Tears streamed down his cheeks and his heart beat so quickly that it almost jumped out of his chest.
“My Prince,” he said, over and over. “My Prince.”
That night, the old man started cleaning and sharpening his blade again. He placed the dummy on the parade ground and began to train seriously. He was waiting for his only and best disciple’s call to arms.
King Hadjar would always have his loyalty.
Chapter 200
The next day, a furious Nero rushed into Hadjar’s room. Hadjar had never seen his friend so angry.
He had been sitting in a lotus position on the bed and didn’t react much to it, just opened his right eye. The former General’s calm infuriated the Prince even more. Therefore, he started pacing around the room and swearing.
“What are you doing?” Hadjar asked calmly.
Nero snarled, grabbed the golden table, and threw it out the window. Hadjar followed its flight with his gaze, feeling indifferent. He hoped that a maid would take a walk in the park that evening and come across this unexpected gift from the Heavens. To be more precise, from the heir of the Kingdom.
“Hadj, let’s just leave this place!” Nero finally calmed down and flopped down on the floor. He leaned his back against the mirror and filled his pipe with tobacco.
“I’m afraid Serra won’t understand our love. She’ll be angry if I take her beloved husband away.”
“Ha. Ha,” Nero mocked dryly. “Very funny. I’m serious. You, me, and Serra. We’ll make a brief visit to the treasury and then travel to the Sea of Sand, and after that, the Empire. Let the morons here bathe in their shit.”
“That sounds very tempting. But I don’t understand why you want to do so now? What was stopping us from leaving right after we beat the sect?”
Nero swore again. He took Hadjar’s pipe down from the shelf and threw it to its owner. Realizing that he wouldn’t have an opportunity to meditate any time soon, Hadjar sighed, caught the pipe, and lit it.
“I thought I could wander around the world and that, by the time I came back, my father would have become a wiser man,” Nero complained, shaking his head. “However, it’s all the same as before: ‘Eren, meet with those nobles’; ‘Eren, go to the border
