Heaven's Greatest Professor

"Do you know how the light spectrum and colour works, dear disciple?"

He nodded. "Are you saying the colour is different because of the spectrum of light?"

"That too," she agreed, though there was something more to it as well. She seemed to debate over the explanation for several moments before opening her mouth. "I don't know if my explanation will make it more difficult for you to understand, and anyway, the first thing you must know is that light is not a path unique or exclusive to celestials."

He frowned but nodded.

"Light is but the fastest medium to exert the essence of power," Ariha said sagely, as light sparked within his mind. "Your void essence mostly emits in gaseous and light form, and what colour does it take shape in?"

"Dark purple," he mumbled.

She nodded. "On a side note, you exert a lot of void essence, but you waste a lot of it... Like most of the gaseous forms of void essence are a waste."

"What?" he blinked, but she wasn't done yet.

"Of course, there doesn't seem to be a limit to how much void essence you can borrow, but you must know how much of a toll it takes on your body."

He nodded heavily. He didn't know any better, but he was pretty sure he would be nothing better than a cripple without the radiant regeneration and recovery power.

"Well, void is the most destructive force in the universe, and terribly hard to deal with," she said. "That's why you need to be twice as careful while dealing with it."

"How?" he could only say.

"Well, I have no experience dealing with void essence, but I can give you some good points on what you need to work on; remind me later," she heaved a breath as the swirls of the way shifted around. "Anyway, about the colour of essence... other than them being on different spectrums, there was also a difference between them as well...

"It wouldn't be wrong to say golden radiance essence is more battle-oriented, while the silver essence is pure and unblemished—the perfect essence for healing others."

He nodded heavily as realisation dawned on him.

"Don't get me wrong, both types of essences have more in common than the difference," she continued. "But the golden essence is more efficient in self-regeneration, recovery, and physical and magical empowerment. You are going to see a lot of that essence in your match a month from now."

"You don't have the golden essence?" he frowned.

"I'm... or I was the greatest healer in history," she said ruefully. "Cultivating the other path would complicate my calling as a healer." She looked at the summit. "I guess that didn't stop me from taking it."

She shook her head and stood up. "Meditate for an hour and we'll go at it again." Find adventures on m_v l|-NovelFire

It didn't seem like she would entertain any more of his questions on that topic anymore. So he discarded the thoughts for now and did as he was asked.

***

Days passed in a flurry. He was wholly motivated to see through all of Ariha's training.

In the first week since his heart transplant, Ariha thoroughly bested him in sparring. While the time he could hold his own against her increased significantly, he found no way to outmaneuver her. She even taunted him for being unable to land a blow on a pure healer—a pure transcendent healer, he had to note... But he hated to admit it, her taunting worked.

He chased after her, putting his everything into it. The difficult part was that she was simply too agile with her two wide celestial wings. He could barely contend with her using **Wings of Radiance**. He could now sustain that ability for an extended period, unlike before when he could barely withstand it for a few seconds.

The Radiance heart changed that for the better, though if he were to fly at high intensity, almost matching his master, he would be exhausted within a few minutes.

Thankfully, as more time passed and he adapted to all the abilities and changes to his body, handling **Wings of Radiance** became easier as well. By the second week, he found he could maintain high-intensity flying for at least five minutes—so he wouldn't have to worry about running out of energy when up against the real menace.

He had little success in mastering the void essence, however. All the pointers Ariha gave surely helped him, and he reduced the wastage of void energy to some degree, but it couldn't compare to how easily he was wielding the radiance essence, with little to no experience with it previously.

"Use your intent to keep your void essence in check," Ariha had advised him a week ago, and he was still trying to figure that out.

Well, he understood her intention with that advice, but the problem couldn't be solved just by simply understanding it. The void is the highest destructive force. He was learning to synergize void essence with his intent, but the equation became a lot harder when he was asked to use his Intent to command the void essence.

That was why Ariha relented the sparring for a couple of days, and taught him two higher spiritual arts. Concentration and Conversion.

Imbuing was one spirit art he learned on his own, but these two arts were at a greater scope, not to mention the difficulty in learning them. Thankfully, it appeared he had learned Concentration before, her teaching worked like a primer to remind him again of the lost mastery.

It was as the name suggested, concentrating essence to bring out diabolical power. Yes, whatever the type of essence it was, if concentrated to a great degree, the effect would always be a diabolical release of power. Apparently, most people below the gold rank are even forbidden to try it, but as always, he wasn't included in this rule.

whereas Conversation was the art of converting essence into different energy forms. Light, in his case, the fastest medium of flow.

So, for the last week, he wholly invested himself in mastering the void light. It wasn't something that could be mastered in weeks, months, or perhaps even in a few years. But even learning a little of it would grant him another weapon against the older Avatar.

Instead of pulling as much void essence as he could, he drew only a fraction of it. But instead of simply imbuing the power into his sword or fist, he concentrated its flow... and converted it to pure dark purple light... all these experiments so far had been destructively promising.

The only issue was that it put great stress on his physique. In his first successful attempt, the void light had split his left fist open. The radiance power healed it in no time, but that showed how destructive the power the void light exerted was.

"You have to master that," Ariha told him. "Not just for surviving the five-minute duel, but for your future. The more void essence you draw upon, the heavier price you have to pay for it."

He nodded and delved into concentrating his essence yet again.

Only a week remained for the promised date.