The march was awkward. Even the scared children didn't make much noise, not wanting to attract the attention of the young boy who had split a dragon in two with a single hit as he lead them through the forest in a rather odd manner.
It wasn't that they were afraid of him, it was that they simply didn't know what to make of him. Everything about him seemed unreal, from his appearance, to his power, to his mere presence. Eventually Rong Rong got sick of the silence and pushed herself to catch up to him at the head of their little group. Wanting to stick by her mistress's side, Chen Yan followed quickly after.
"Hey, um... Thanks for helping us out earlier." Rong Rong said, trying to start up a conversation.
"No problem." The boy replied, sounding rather disinterested. He didn't even bother to turn his head in her direction as he talked.
Rong Rong scowled at the back of his head. She didn't like being ignored, and while he wasn't exactly ignoring her, he wasn't giving her too much attention. "So who are you exactly?"
"Ichi Guo." He said again, but didn't say anything else.
"That doesn't exactly explain who you are." Rong Rong pointed out.
"What, do you want my life story? It's not like I know who the hell any of you are." Ichi Guo said, giving the girl a glance. Seeing the angry look on her face he sighed. "Ask a more specific question."
"Alright then... how old are you?" Rong Rong asked.
"Eleven." Ichi Guo said simply.
"Really? I'm ten, and Chen Yan here is twelve." Rong Rong said, Ichi Guo didn't respond any more than a nod that showed that he had heard. "What are you doing in this forest?"
"Not really any of your business." Ichi Guo replied.
Chen Yan scowled at the response. She didn't care if he had helped them, he was being an ass. "You should show some more respect to Lady Rong Rong. You are part of the Seven Hells Clan, aren't you? I saw your bone mask real guard. So you should be grateful that the heiress of the Seven Treasure Glass Tower is even talking to you."
"Sorry, but you got it wrong. I'm not part of any clan." Ichi Guo said. "Nor have I ever heard of your clan, so sorry if I'm not impressed."
"What? You've never heard of the Seven Treasure Glass Tower? It's the second most powerful family in the Empire, right after the Imperial family." Chen Yan said in complete disbelief.
"I stay away from politics and other power games. None of it interests me." Ichi Guo said glancing at Rong Rong. "But if you are the heiress to such an important family, then what the hell are you doing out here? Couldn't you just have someone else bring you a spirit monster if you needed the ring so badly?"
Rong Rong glared at Ichi Guo. She tried to meet his eyes so that he could see just how angry that last comment had made her, but as she looked into his calm golden eyes she got an uneasy feeling and had to look away. They just had an old look to them. Even though he was only a year older than her, his eyes said otherwise.
"I was told to just stay home, but I convinced my father that I needed to go. If I'm going to be a real Spirit Master, I can't just sit back and let everyone else do my work for me." She said heatedly. "How am I supposed to someday support my team if I can't be relied upon."
"Hm... Alright. I can respect that." He said giving her a nod of genuine approval. The gesture surprised Rong Rong even more. "If you had felt that way and just sat on your hands anyways, then you would be an obnoxious brat as far as I am concerned. But if you go through with your ideals, even when people tell you not to, then that shows real conviction."
Rong Rong looked down, feeling her face heat up. "I don't care about your approval." She hadn't expected him to say anything like that. She had expected him to just dismiss her as a spoiled child. Nearly everyone saw her as the only daughter of a powerful clan and a genius. She knew that they said she was arrogant and cold behind her back.
"I came into the forest to deliver some medicine to an old man who lives here. I'm taking you all with me to his home. He's a bit hard to get along with, but I don't think he'll turn you away right now. My sister took that injured friend of yours ahead. She will do what she can until we get there." Ichi Guo informed them. The two girls blinked at him as Ichi Guo started to open up a little.
"Is... he going to be alright?" Chen Yan asked, feeling guilty. Lin Qi had been injured trying to protect her. If she had just stayed back, then maybe he wouldn't have been hurt before this weird kid showed up.
"Not sure." Ichi Guo admitted. He saw the girl flinch and seem to crumple up. Rong Rong moved to Chen Yan's side to try to comfort her. "Sorry... I've absorbed the monster's spirit ring, giving me an understanding of how to make an antidote for the poison. The only question will be whether or not I can find the right materials fast enough."
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Rong Rong asked. The man had been a member of her party, as a support class Spirit Master, she had to help him.
"You can help out once we get there. Until then, just keep moving. We got another twenty minutes or so at this snail's pace and the sooner we get to shelter the better." Ichi Guo said. "You all picked a really shitty time to come out here looking for spirit rings. It's dragon mating season."
"W...what!?" One of the spirit masters who had been listening in gulped. "Dragon mating season!?"
"That's right. Anyone from the villages bordering this place could have told you that. It's one month every forty four years. Male dragons come out of their caves and spread all over the forest trying to claim as much territory as possible and mate with the females. You people just happened to be unlucky enough to come by right in the middle of it. And now that some of you are covered in that last dragon's blood, any dragon that gets a sniff of it will go into a frenzy, thinking there's an injured rival around." Ichi Guo said, the casualness in the way he was talking about it made the kids even more scared. "Just be glad you didn't run into a more powerful dragon. There's definitely at least one ten thousand year Blue Green River Dragon in this forest. If you had ran into that you'd all be dead."
Chen Yan's eyes widened. Her grandfather had fought against a Blue Green River Dragon in order to obtain his ninth and final spirit ring and become a Titled Douluo. They were considered to be one of the five king races among the dragons breeds. A hundred year old Blue Green River Dragon was considered to be as powerful as a normal ten thousand year monster. Even though Chen Xin had hunted it with his own father, a rank seventy nine Seven Treasure Glass Tower and a second Titled Douluo, Guo Rong, they had barely managed to beat it. Her grandfather had forbidden her from ever even considering hunting one.
"If it's so dangerous, then what are you doing here?" Rong Rong said, raising her voice a little in panic. "Wait, didn't you say someone actually lived out here?"
"It doesn't bother me. My sister and I can sense monsters from a great distance away and we can move a lot faster than you can. We simply avoid conflict." Ichi Guo explained. "And no one bothers the old bear. He's been out here for so long he's practically part of the landscape."
"A sixth sense, you've actually managed to master the sixth sense?" Chen Yan asked incredulously, realizing why they hadn't been traveling in a straight line. "Impossible. You're only eleven."
"There's no such thing as impossible. Only unlikely." Ichi Guo said. "Though I won't personally say that I've mastered it. I've got a lot of skills that I really have no business knowing. Suppose you could say the normal bounds of logic don't really seem to apply to me."
Rong Rong then asked the question that had been on everyone's minds. "Ichi Guo... just what rank are you?"
The orange haired boy was quiet for a few seconds, as if pondering whether or not he should answer. "Thirty two."
The air was still. Rank thirty two, at the age of eleven was unbelievable. Rong Rong was considered to be the greatest genius her family had seen in over five hundred years, and she had only just reached rank twenty at the age of ten. Yet, to be able to do the things they had seen him do, it seemed as though he should have been higher still.
Who exactly was this boy?
Ichi Guo was starting to form an opinion about these people. That wasn't good.
Cool headed and apathetic as he normally was towards people he didn't know, he formed attachments way too quickly. After he started to see people as more than just individuals he was happening to pass on the road, he started to care about them. The world was a whole lot easier when you simply didn't give a shit. Giving a shit usually landed one in trouble somewhere down the line. Especially when it managed to get you mixed up in politics or in the machination of a mad man who was trying to become a god.
This girl, Ning Rong Rong, she had some spunk to her. She was stubborn and her stubbornness caused her to make bad chooses. She lacked life experience that would help her reason through things. But stubbornness wasn't a bad thing. Not as far as Ichi Guo was concerned. It would help drive the girl, and stop her from becoming the kind of person who just accepts the evil of the world and turns a blind eye. She had the potential to not only be a strong person, but also a good person. As long as she became more worldly.
That said, the level of common sense she was lacking was downright unbelievable. While her yellow dress with a white underdress and matching belt was all very pretty, it was way too hot and heavy for the forest and running around in platform shoes was just asking for trouble. Did she simply not own any outdoor clothes?
Her shoulder length pink hair had been brushed and Ichi Guo could smell her shampoo from more than arm's length away. Taking such care of her appearance when they were going to be hiking in a monster filled forest? She even had bells in her hair. What kind of idiot did that?.. Ok, Zaraki was different...
Her spiritual energy was calm and controlled, it had a bit of a warm feel to it. The girl had talent when it came to controlling her spiritual energy. Maybe more talent than Ichi Guo himself in that department. She seemed to be a fresh rank twenty, which fit with the fact that she was out searching for a spirit ring in the first place. Either she was very talented, she had a good teacher, or maybe a bit of both. Ichi Guo was guessing the first one though. If anyone in the band he had saved was her teacher, then she didn't have a very good one.
While they seemed to have some teamwork skills, their individual skills were severally lacking. Ichi Guo was pretty confident that if he went up against the lot of them with his bare hands, he would beat them with ease. Unless her real teacher wasn't in the group. They wouldn't have too much trouble with your average monster, but anything strong or cunning was out of their league. Nothing more than rookies to the reincarnated reaper. None of them had the same level of control as Rong Rong did, so it was unlikely any of them were her teacher.
Chen Yan had a bit of the loyal dog vibe going for her. Something that Ichi Guo could do without. Loyalty was one thing. Following around blindly was another. Some of the worst crimes ever committed were done in the name of loyalty.
Her spirit was a lot sharper and rougher than Rong Rong's, much closer to Ichi Guo's own pattern. However the way she walked about told him everything he needed to know about her. She wasn't a fighter, not yet. She was young and inexperienced in heavy combat. Talented as she was in spirit control, she would need to improve her combat skills.
Her clothing wasn't much better than Rong Rong's for tracking, being heavy white materials in some kind of half traditional design, but at least it covered everything that needed to be covered without restricting the legs too much. Actually, most of the people in this group seemed to be wearing some kind of white. Perhaps it was a clan thing. Didn't really matter too much in the end.
What did matter is that these people were so slow. With so many complete rookies in their party, they didn't have a mastery of higher movement skills, so they had to actually walk the distance on foot. Ichi Guo could have ran back and forth more than a dozen times in the amount of time it was taking them to get anywhere.
It wasn't until they finally did reach the Old Bear's place that Ichi Guo finally started to relax, letting out a sigh of relief as they broke through the trees into a massive clearing with a strange rock formation in the center of it, surrounded on all sides by a field of flowers. The field of jade colored flowers gave a surreal look to the entire place.
"I don't believe it. These are real Hopeful Jade Blossoms." One of the spirit masters said as he looked out over the field of flowers. "To find one of them is extremely rare, but an entire field." He bent down towards the flowers, reaching out towards them.
Ichi Guo was on him in the blink of an eye, startling the man as he grabbed onto the man's wrist with a dead iron grip. "Don't. Touch. The flowers." Ichi Guo said serious, pulling the man's hand away. "Some things are sacred. These flowers mean more to the Old Bear than our lives, so don't even think about picking one."
"What's the big deal? They are rare and beautiful, but they don't have any mystical properties, do they? Is this how he keeps all the monsters away?" Someone else said looking over the field in awe.
"It has nothing to do with any properties they have or even the way they look. The Old Bear can hardly appreciate that. They were a gift to him from someone he cared about." Ichi Guo said, pointing towards a point in middle of a particularly dense cluster of the flowers. Four grave markers stood there. "Respect the dead, or I will make you join them."
"R...right." A younger man who had been there to get his second spirit ring said with a gulp.
Ichi Guo turned away from them and started to walk along the edge of the flowers. "There is a bridge to get across the flowers. Just follow me, and stop belly aching. The sooner we get there the sooner you can get off your feet." Ichi Guo said, leading them to a stone bridge. The bridge was made completely out of earth and seemed to have simply appeared straight out of the ground rather than having been made by human hands.
"Ichi Guo, what's this... 'Old Bear' like?" Rong Rong asked him.
"He's old, loud, obnoxious, old, ungrateful, arrogant, old, retarded, and he hates people." Ichi Guo said with a sound of disgust. "But he's not the kind of guy to just turn people away, and he has a heart of gold once you get to know him."
Rong Rong was unsure what to make of this display of distaste for the man he was bringing them to. She just hoped that everything would turn out alright.
"You can all fuck off!"
"You heartless old bastard! You're really going to send them out like this!?"
"Hell yeah I am! Why the fuck did you bring this bunch of dip shits to my door anyways!? If they all die, that's just nature taking its course!"
"And if I kick your ass into the grave, would that also be nature taking its damn course!?"
"I'd like to see you try, Reaper Brat!"
The group from the Seven Treasure Clan just stood there, not sure what to do, while Ichi Guo got into a shouting match with what had to be one of the oldest looking people in the world.
His skin was wrinkled and his arms and legs were all extremely thin, but still well-muscled. His head was nearly completely bald with only a few strands of hair stuck to his liver spot covered scalp, though the rest of his face was over grown with hair, a long grey beard came down to his knees and was tangled and greasy, like he couldn't be asked to take care of it. He was covered in what appeared to be thick pelts inexpertly stitched together and his feet were bare, revealing huge yellow toenails. His teeth were all either yellow or brown, though he still seemed to have all of them. Spit came out of his mouth with every other word as his ear splitting voice tore at the ears.
Rong Rong found herself half hoping that he would just turn them away and that Ichi Guo might guide them out of the forest, around the dragons. However, there would still be the case of the injured party member to deal with. As much as being around this man made her skin crawl, she had been taught to never leave a party member for dead. Not so long as there is the slightest glimmer of hope.
Still, she couldn't help but to stare at the man's eyes. The pupils seemed to be a milky white and didn't move at all as he swung his arms around and gestured angrily. The man was completely blind.
I feel like they tried really hard at the beginning to make Rong Rong seem like a brat, but I couldn't really buy it.
Yes she told Oscar to go fuck himself, but everyone hates on Oscar all the time, most of them assaulted him, and he was acting like a pervert towards all of the girls. You can hardly blame her for beating down what at the time appeared to be a potential obsessed stalker.
She got angry with the Principal for yelling at her for not running laps around the village like she was told, but that task was a bull shit one from the beginning that was actually pointless and he had set up so that she wouldn't do it.
And when she got angry and offered Tang San money and a position in her clan in exchange for helping her get revenge on Mu Bai, it was right after he assaulted her and threatened her. Her reaction was pretty justified, all things considered. If you punched me in the face and then threatened to kick my ass if I ever bothered you again, I would be thinking about payback.
Yes she was a bitch at the time, but she was only being a bitch to people who were being complete assholes or perverts towards her. At all other times she was completely civil. If she had just taken it without a word I would have thought less of her.
Then again, I am apparently the person who tries to feel sympathy for everyone who people don't feel any sympathy for and who isn't a cartoon villain trying to take over the world/become god (Fuck you Aizen!). Maybe it is because I don't really understand the concept of hate, other than self-hate.
Hell, the person I sympathize least with in the entire story is Tang San, going off an building an army to wage war against an entire nation for revenge for killing his mother. Disrupting the peace between three world powers in order to achieve this goal. Jesus. How many lives are you going to throw away to avenge the mother you never knew? One that you find out isn't even really dead for fucks sake.
When he is offered a chance to make peace, and in doing so, help unite the land and end all war forever. He basically tells them all to go fuck themselves because he wants his revenge and doesn't care what he has to do to get it. Seriously, the fuck man, for a monk you sure are single minded! All he had to do was turn a blind eye to them killing the Emperor and replacing the prince. The Dou Empire and Spirit Hall would unite and pressure Star Empire to join them as well, and everyone would have just stopped fighting.
This would all probably be more of an issue if most of the people in Spirit Hall wasn't (as I've already pointed out) stupidly evil. I mean the kind of evil who refuses to have their breakfast unless they can tie down a starving child in for of them to force them to watch them savior every bite.
Its not that I don't like Tang San as a character. Its just that I find it impossible to sympathize with someone who doesn't seem to care about the consequences to his actions. This is the problem I have with "Tales of Demons and Gods" (a similar kind of story), the main character is so obsessed with revenge that they actively make their lives harder in order to mess with their enemy. An enemy who would be perfectly content to ignore them if they didn't constantly go out of their way to cause trouble. Only made okay by the fact that the bad guys are evil beyond all reasoning.