“Yes, Yes I did all this. Yes I did.”, Liu Feng smiled sheepishly. He scratched his head. Then he asked again, “What is the primal chaos then? I heard the spirits talk about it…”

“Ohh that? It’s an uncrossable divide between the mortal realm and the spirit realm. Only souls can cross through. But if your soul already has the imprints of spirits, and you have been chosen, your soul becomes too heavy to travel to the spirit realm. That is why you can only have one or two spirits choosing you.”

“Is it? Ok, thanks. Looks like there is a lot I have to learn about the world.”

Liu Feng continued doing his work, and worked all through to midnight, barely completing the work. He fell onto his bed, exhausted and immediately dozed off to sleep.

The next day,

An attendant entered his room to wake him up. She reminded him that he had classes. Liu Feng cursed inside and went to his Magic theory class. By now the class was incredibly boring. He already finished learning Khair. He sat in class, and was about to go to sleep when he heard the spirits talking.

“What is this inscription? Liu Feng, you must stay awake during these classes. There is much that we wish to know about how these humans are using magic. It is half the reason you have four spirits.”

Liu Feng nodded, and kept listening to his class. Samiel had started giving Khair lessons as homework and started working on incantations and how to use them. He explained how to contact the ‘spirits’ to use this power.

“What contact with the spirits? You are just using the mana directly in the most crudest way possible. This is the problem with humans. So untrusting that they couldn’t work with us, and so useless that they deteriorated their previous understanding of spirits and magic. Did you know that once upon a time, there were only four kingdoms? Out of them, each had a specialization in each element, and the king was whoever was that generation’s chosen by that particular King of the elements. You would have been the king of the fire and water empires.”

Liu Feng was interested. He thought about it. “What if I could bring back the power of the spirits back into my kingdom. Then, it would be more powerful than the rest of the kingdoms.”. Liu Feng suddenly started laughing hysterically, when Samiel shouted, “Are you paying attention? Here, tell me what incantation to use in this instance?”

Then, Avian whispered the answer in his ear. Liu Feng smiled and wrote the answer on the board. But then, Saliem hit Liu Feng in the head and shouted, “That was the previous question. Are you even paying attention? Stop daydreaming and listening to class you idiot.”. Liu Feng’s face darkened. “I will remember this Avian”, he said in a quiet voice. He could hear the spirits laughing in his head.

Time passed incredibly slowly in Liu Feng’s head, but he got through the class alive. After a short break, he went to the swordsmanship class. Davis was sitting ready for him. He told him, “I am pretty sure you are rusty because of that long sleep. Run three laps around the grounds.”. Liu Feng gritted his teeth but complied. He started running, but to his surprise, it was easy. His body felt light, and he did not feel any strain. He seemed to have an endless supply of energy.

As he was wondering what had changed, Aqueous suddenly spoke, “That is what mana does to the body. There are some that even direct all the mana into the body to become stronger, and become magical swordsmen.. You could try it out.”