When Gu Luo entered the classroom, everyone was silent. He immediately had the feeling that they were waiting for him.
Leolia, leaning against the chalkboard, turned her head in his direction and her face lit up when she saw him.
"Ah, Gu Luo, we were waiting for you. Come here."
He approached her.
"Give me your hand."
Gu Luo didn't really understand why she was asking him that, but he complied nonetheless.
Leolia took his hand in hers and squeezed it. She closed her eyes for a few moments before opening them.
"Well, well, you're Space type like Wáng Jùnjié."
Gu Luo didn't really understand what that meant. He had a feeling that it had something to do with what the mages called ether, but that was all.
His puzzled expression having been noticed by Leolia, she immediately stopped to explain.
"People who can manipulate ether are considered ABSURDES, that's the reason you're here. Among those who can use ether, there are several types that characterize our affinities with the manipulation of our environment. Water, fire, rock, space, metal, all of these are types that characterize everyone's affinity."
"So I have an affinity with the Space type."
Leolia had an embarrassed expression.
"Yes, if you want, but this way of looking at things is used to simplify things. In reality, ether users are divided into two major groups depending on their personality. Either those who follow the path of grace and are predisposed to being able to transform and create, or those who follow the path of nature and are predisposed to alteration or manipulation. If I had to put it simply, since you're Space type, you're most likely following the path of grace."
"..."
Gu Luo's brain was smoking, there was too much information to retain all at once. He felt his head spinning.
Shěn Yán's voice pulled him out of his daze.
"You just have to tell yourself that you can act on all the space surrounding you. That's what Leolia is trying to explain to you."
Gu Luo nodded.
He looked at his hand. Manipulate the environment. What could that even mean? Gu Luo had no idea.
"Alright, let's go to the outdoor courtyard. I seem to remember that you guys still have trouble with your aikido parries, so now is the time to work on them."
Leolia said.
Everyone began to get up to head for the door and Leolia, with a big smile, turned toward Gu Luo, who hadn't moved.
"I have a great exercise for you."
Gu Luo saw his classmates' shoulders tense up as soon as she mentioned the 'great exercise.'
He had a bad feeling.
Everyone went down behind the building where a large courtyard seemed to stretch several kilometers into the distance. Tennis, soccer, and athletics fields were spread across the immense area.
His classmates began stretching on one of the empty fields while Leolia motioned for Gu Luo to follow her.
She led him behind a series of small sheds until they reached a vegetable garden.
She opened the vegetable garden's gate with a key and let Gu Luo enter behind her before closing it.
Gu Luo almost stepped on a squash as he entered the vegetable garden. The surface of the garden was filled with fruits and vegetables to the point where it was extremely difficult to move around without risking stepping on something.
"Here we are!" She looked at Gu Luo with a satisfied smile.
She grabbed something from her pocket and threw a piece of cloth toward Gu Luo, who almost fell backward onto the strawberries as he barely managed to catch it.
"Put this on."
"Uh..."
"Cover your eyes."
Gu Luo did as she said and found himself plunged into darkness.
He heard Leolia's voice coming from his left.
"So, to train you to sense the flow of ether that passes through every living being, I've hidden the key that opens the gate inside a tomato in the vegetable garden. Your job is to sense which tomato is suffering the most and retrieve the key so you can get out."
"What?!"
Gu Luo heard Leolia climb over the gate behind him.
"And no cheating. You're not allowed to take the blindfold off. And be careful not to trample Old Man Chen's vegetables, otherwise I wouldn't give much for your chances when he finds out. Alright, good luck!"
He heard Leolia's footsteps move away until they disappeared.
Find the key while blindfolded? How was he supposed to do that? He couldn't see anything, it was simply impossible to take a step without crushing a vegetable or a fruit. He could barely move around even without a blindfold over his eyes.
As much as Leolia told him that ether existed, he could barely believe it. It was true, he had never been able to see these so-called mages in action and until now the VEIL had looked like nothing more than a clandestine terrorist organization.
Nothing confirmed to him that these people were actually connected to the government. It was true, he had trusted them without asking any questions, but he knew nothing about them. One day, they had simply shown up at his school.
When he thought about it, the only witness from the school who had been there at that moment was a doctor he was seeing for the first time.
That's right, Chén Míngyuǎn might have been in on it from the beginning. There was nothing proving to Gu Luo that this doctor actually worked as the school's nurse.