53 Two Birds with One Stone (1/2)

Two hours had passed since Daniel had rescued Heimart's team. Enough time for Ligart and Paule's team to arrive.

The eleven of them were now standing near the shore, observing the water's slow movement.

”If it's not corrosion what do you think it is?” Heimart asked to the masked petite girl.

Since the night she had accompanied Daniel, the petite girl had become more talkative. She would still only talk when consulted, and would keep her phrases brief and concise, but at least she wouldn't keep quiet.

”I saw movement in the water..” She responded with a peaceful tone.

After a moment of thinking, Heimart looked at Daniel and asked him ”How many trips would it take you to get us all there?”

Daniel didn't respond, as he wasn't sure. Instead, he approached the water and decided to try something. His feet were slowly immersed into the water, as he closed his eyes for a moment.

During the next minute, the slow motion of the water turned into rough movement, then waves started to appear on the surface of the water.. What was strange, was that these waves went in two opposite direction.. They seemed to be moving away from one another.

After a minute, the water started to split, stopping only after a twenty meters long crack had been formed.. Between the two sides, a clear path at the bottom of the lake had been made.

The feat that Daniel had just performed had taken a huge toll on his accumulated spiritual essence. Nonetheless, he was still able to maintain the consumption through the use of 'Time is Precious', which was able to speed up the conversion of ki into spiritual essence.

”Woah.. That's impressive” Said Ligart. He then walked into the crack in the water, and started to admire the still, yet slowly moving walls.

Every cultivator present on the scene, looked up in astonishment.

Being from the various powerful forces amongst the kingdoms all around the sea, they had been able to see many young geniuses. Some even prided themselves to be part of them.. But for someone under twenty-five years, to reach such a comprehension of water essence, was beyond their imagination.

Water was a difficult essence to comprehend, and its use could barely be considered adequate when put into the perspective of a battle.

Most spiritual cultivators focused more on offensive essences like fire and lightning, defensive essences like earth and metal, and essence that could increase their mobility, like wind.

While the few spiritual cultivators who had decided to comprehend water's essence, where those who inhabited port cities, often traveled through sea, or that wanted to master it to such a degree, that it would allow them to create ice.

Ice was still considered water, as it didn't require the combination of two essences like lava did, and yet, it was still considered one of the best offensive and defensive elements to gain comprehension of.

Unfortunately, creating ice required an amazingly high comprehension of water essence.

Daniel himself, with a comprehension two hundred times faster than that of a normal cultivator, had still taken an entire evening to reach the level of comprehension he was at.

Not to mention, that that had only been possible thanks to the high quality samples of essence he had had access to, which made comprehending water essence, hundreds of time faster than learning it from a simple body of water, like a lake or a sea.

Daniel had only known another young cultivator who was able to use Ice magic, and that was Yala. He wasn't aware of how complicate using ice magic was at first, but before he could understand it, he had found out that his spiritual teacher, the old alchemist, was in fact, Yala's grandfather.

It wasn't strange for her to be able to use it, as she had probably practiced for years, with the help of powerful essence spheres such as the one Daniel had practiced for 5 hours with.

The sheer number of cultivators around the lake was huge.

Even considering the few of them who had been accompanied into the lake by spiritual cultivators, or those who had managed to find the help of one afterwards.. The number of the remaining solitary cultivators and parties, was still in the thousands.

With a loud voice, Daniel said ”Let's check out the water.. If something dangerous hides within, we can rush back” He wanted to make sure nobody would attempt to follow them in, as in case something dangerous happened, he didn't want to have to take care about some freeloader's safety.

The group of eleven entered the rift in the water, and started to observe the walls carefully. Unfortunately, the water was too murky to clearly see through.

After half an hour of pointless observation, Daniel thought of something.. He turned towards Heimart and asked him ”Wait a second.. Tell me again in what state did you find the corpse in?”

”No blood.. Every bit of tissue had been consumed. Only bones and clothes remained.” Responded Heimart after thinking it through.

Suddenly, a small knife appeared in Daniel's hand. It was one of his throwing knives.

Daniel stabbed the extremely sharp end of the knife into his fingertip, then, just as a single drop of blood came out of his hand, the water became darker, and it started to bend out of his control. ”OUT OF THE WATER! NOW!!” Shouted the alarmed Daniel.

The group didn't stop to think, and instead, started to run towards the shore.

Daniel was only able to create a passage about twenty meters long, so the group had no problem in dashing out. What shocked them, was that the bent part of the water followed them all the way until they got out of the water.

Once outside, Daniel gave up on the control over the two walls, which immediately shut close, and instead extracted a small ball of the murky water, and made it fly towards him.

Under everybody's eyes, Daniel started to slowly remove the water bit by bit, until only a pearl-like amount remained. He then moved the pearl between his eye and the sun, and looked into it.

What Daniel saw inside this small pearl, were hundreds of tiny worms, frantically twisting in the small bead of water.

One side of the bead was still bent towards Daniel, as if the worms had been trying to push through the water and assault Daniel's bleeding finger.

To confirm his theory, he started to move his fingertip around the bead, and as expected, the worms followed.

”I know what those are!” Said someone within the crowd. ”Those are Sharp-nosed Leeches.. But they should not be that small..”

Daniel turned toward the girl who had just talked, and asked her ”What do you know about these things?”

The girl immediately answered ”They are voracious creatures. They smell blood in the water from miles away, and are even capable of smelling it out of the water, if nearby. Once found a prey, they not only eat the blood in the water, but they also devour their bodies.”