Chapter 4-The Southern Invaders

As Bing Xi Feng told me, there are two portals to the Spirit World at the south and north poles. Ten thousand years ago, the dark spirit of Watu entered the human world from the Spirit World, followed by other spirits, including Bing Xi Feng herself, as well as Rava, the light spirit, the eternal opponent of Watu. When Rava defeated Vata, she locked him in the Spirit World, and almost all the spirits who had previously come to the human world returned there... but not all the spirits returned to their own world, some still stayed and began to live in comfortable places for themselves. Someone chose a swamp, someone a lake, someone a forest, someone lives in the mouth of a volcano, and someone at the poles, where the spiritual background is highest, because there are closed portals nearby, through which a lot of energy from the Spirit World seeps anyway.

It's not like Bing Xi Feng was able to teach me Ice Magic very quickly, but a couple of her tips were helpful. The first tip was on movement, you had to move smoothly, but the movement ended abruptly "like a wing flapping". Well, the second tip was about my attempts to subdue the local and so saturated with energy ice, I needed not to saturate the ice with my inner Qi, but to synchronize my energy with the energy that is already in the ice. This advice was the key to mastering any elements at all, however, it is not so easy to rebuild your energy, and if you do this, then access to another element is closed. Local magicians adapt to one of the four elements, but then they can't use the rest.

However, all these nuances are solved by practice, you can learn how to quickly reconfigure your energy, or adjust part of the aura to a certain element. I have this option now, the left side of the aura is set to fire, and the right side is set to ice, but in the palace I could only train fire magic, which is why the left side of the aura developed, while the right side of the ice on the contrary began to weaken. However, there is another drawback-the more you divide your aura, adjusting it to different elements, the less results you can achieve in each individual elemental magic.

Here you are either an all-rounder who knows how to do a little of everything, or a master, but only in one thing. The Avatar has all four elements, but it is enhanced by the spirit of Rava, which compensates for the Avatar's weakness, bringing his mediocre skills in the four elements to the level of masters. I don't have such a spirit, I'll have a domain, but it won't be long yet, so for now I'd better focus on just two elements, which is what I was doing. Now I mainly need practice, a lot of practice, training will help to develop the aura, and learn how to work better with the energies directly.

At first, Bing Xi Feng annoyed me, she was too pompous for an ice chicken, but when I started to show improvements in Ice Magic, she became less sarcastic, although she didn't like that I was also training fire magic, at such times she would take the ice basket with fruits that I gave her as payment, and fly to the top of the ice mountain, where she had a nest,

I was still training near the spirit portal, but I was flying on a frozen ship, which, by the way, was not so far from the settlement of the Southern Water Tribe, which is why I sometimes saw people of this tribe, and also noticed two little girls who definitely used Water Magic in their games, throwing snowballs at each other, which flew along rather complicated trajectories. That's right, the Southern Invaders did a good job and slaughtered all the water mages in the Southern Tribe, apparently these two girls are the only mages here, and if the Southern Invaders can still attack the tribe, then they will just kill these two. Well, it will be an extra motivation for me the next time I encounter Fire Nation ships.

Completely unharmed, the Fire Nation frigates need about two days to sail the distance from the Southern Invaders ' sea base to the Southern Water Tribe, their base is located somewhere on the Air Nomad Islands. After me, these frigates were in pretty poor condition, now they will need about a week to return to base. They might be able to fix the ships on the way, but they'd still need a proper overhaul of the propulsion system, and that might take a couple of months. In general, the Southern Invaders will most likely return in three or four months, and I would like to meet them not directly off the coast of the South Pole, but somewhere in the sea, so I will have to fly and patrol the coastal zone sometimes, maybe they have a lot of spare ships at the base there, which they will transfer to, and will But I think it's more profitable for them to wait for those three ships to be repaired, and then come here in large numbers.

Soon it was a polar day at the South Pole, and I liked it less than the polar night, because of the snow and ice reflecting the sunlight, it was too bright. During the polar night, the southern lights illuminated everything perfectly, and were aesthetically more beautiful than the constantly blinding sun, which will continue to shine here for six months in a row. With the onset of the day, warming began in the south, the temperature increased by twenty degrees, it was minus seventy, it became minus fifty, it was at the pole itself, on the outskirts of the southern continent, it became noticeably warmer.

In this world, the Sun gives additional power to fire mages, and the Moon, on the contrary, gives power to water mages. During the solstice, this Fire Magic enhancement effect is at its maximum, and this is the day that the Southern Invaders chose to attack the Water Tribe again... more precisely, they were planning to launch attacks on this day, but I noticed them a long time ago, and I began to prepare for a battle with nine frigates and one Fire Nation battleship. The battleships were almost four times the size of frigates, held many times more soldiers, and were also equipped with heavy trebuchets and catapults that fired fire projectiles. The Southern Invaders decided to take it seriously this time, and I somehow didn't expect them to bring a battleship with them, they are less maneuverable than frigates, and this is quite important when you are sailing on a cold sea where there are often floating icebergs.

— Can I stop nine frigates and a battleship?" Even I'm curious myself. I said, standing on the ice floe and looking at the huge metal ships.

Over the past time, and it took almost four months, I learned how to create fog directly from the ice, it was rather a dense ice suspension, but it performed its function of camouflage very well, already at arm's length nothing was visible at all.

"Bing, can you help me?" — I've started creating an icy fog, but I'm not strong enough to cover the entire dozen ships of the Southern Invaders.

- One hundred fruits. She named her price as ice phoenix, and immediately started creating an ice mist without giving me a chance to bargain. Together with Bing Xi Feng, we have enclosed all the ships in a white shroud, Bing herself will maintain this icy fog, and I will have to damage, and maybe even destroy these ships.

After the last time, I was convinced that throwing a fire sphere into the chimney could cause the damage I needed, so I switched to thermal vision, and began flying between the flues of ships, and throwing my fire gifts there, which have recently become several times stronger, which is why they were also effective against the battleship.

The ships began to take turns exploding, and the blast waves momentarily dispersed the icy fog, as well as illuminating it with bright flashes of fire. The soldiers realized that this blizzard was not accidental, but only a cover for sabotage, which caused the fire mages to shoot their magic into the sky and to the sides, and the soldiers also used tribushets with catapults, also shooting in all directions, hoping to hit the enemy. This made my life a little more difficult, and Bing Xi Feng will now have to fly more actively to avoid getting hit by a stray shell.

The soldiers could not understand exactly how the enemy was attacking them, but since the boilers and turbines were exploding, they began to guard them more actively, but they could not somehow control the chimneys, the chimney was quite high, and had the shape of an ordinary cylinder, which made it impossible to put a soldier there to guard, not to mention that such a guard would simply be poisoned by smoke.

This time I intercepted ships quite far out at sea, and this time I decided to destroy all the turbines, let them then get to the port as they want, if the first time they did not understand that they can no longer attack the south, then let them now cook in the cold sea. And Bing Xi Feng was still offended by them, because she was shot with fire shells, and froze the sea, shackling all the ships in the ice.

"That'll be a thousand dollars' worth of fruit." Ice phoenix said as she sat on my right shoulder after finishing our surgery. Without Bing's control, the icy fog began to dissipate, and it became clear what had happened to the ships, and they were frozen, and at the same time burned from the inside.

- No, this is too much, I have only half a thousand of them left somewhere, and I can't pick new ones, their season passed four months ago.

"Okay, I'll give you a loan, you'll owe me half a thousand fruits. - Bing's help was really very useful to me, so you can also pay, - Wait, how will you continue to pay for magic lessons with me? The bird asked.

"No way, I'll have to do without your instructions. — I spread my hands... and then put my hands together and dived into the water, the fog was almost lifted, and my flight would have been very noticeable now, so I took a more inconspicuous swim.

Bing, having received her payment, flew to the mountain, but returned a few days later, deciding to teach me a loan for the time being.

Spirits can live for tens of thousands of years, but I have become a kind of entertainment for the ice phoenix, diluting its long and monotonous life. For her, the length of a human life is like a year for an ordinary person, even if she is with me for my entire life, it won't be that long for her… This is assuming that I live as long as normal people, and I will live much longer, plus, in this world, the spiritual background is very rich, which is why strong magicians quite often turn into spirits, and continue to live in the Spirit World, so Bing and I can continue to be friends, even after my supposed death.

After a while, I returned to the scene of the battle to check on how the Southern Invaders were coping with the problems I had arranged for them. And they had to send boats to the port for help, because they can't fix such damage themselves. During the explosions, there were also wounded and dead soldiers, but I honestly didn't care about them, they didn't come here for peaceful purposes, but to kill... kill men, women, children, and the elderly. That's right, these soldiers belonged to the Fire Nation, of which I have been a prince since birth... but I don't care about that fact either, I ran away from home, and I don't care what nationality they are, if they do something I don't like, I will stop them, even if there are victims on their part.

I think in a couple of weeks, or even less, more ships will come here to save these, and they can also be disabled, there will be some damned place where the broken ships of the Fire People will accumulate.

In the last world, before I became Emperor, I was a saboteur-killer, there is something funny in this business, when you are alone, disrupt the plans of an entire empire, when you defeat opponents who outnumber you both in number and strength with small forces. After defeating ten Fire Nation ships at once, I became even more convinced of the usefulness of magic, and continued to train it with great zeal.

Bing Xi Feng, in addition to giving me tips on how to learn magic, told me some stories, mostly about other spirits left behind in the human world. So she knew another spirit bird, he was a Spirit of Knowledge, his name was Wang Shi Tong, and he looked like a huge owl. Wang Shi Tong built a library somewhere in the desert, where he collected knowledge from all over the world of people, information was collected by his spirit assistants who visited the south pole. I'll be able to visit this owl sometime, because I mainly need to know about magic and the history of the world itself, because the palace library had a very censored version of the story.

Bing also spoke about another spirit who calls herself "The Mother of Faces", she is a kind spirit who helps people. As is clear from her name, she can give a person a new face and personality, she lives somewhere in the Land of Fire. In contrast to this spirit, there is Koh the Face Stealer, he is the son of the Mother of Faces, and unlike the first, Koh is an evil spirit that steals people's faces. It lives somewhere at the north pole in the Sacred Forest of Spirits, in the middle of which is a closed northern portal. In general, the southern portal is also located in the middle of the forest, but Bing created a huge ice mountain above the portal and above the forest so that spiritual energy can be trapped and accumulated in it. She also showed me the closed portal itself, it looks like a glowing blue sphere, and the spiritual background near the portal is really poorer than on the top of the ice mountain where Bing made her nest.

Also at the north pole, not far from the Sacred Forest, there is an Oasis of Spirits, where two strong spirits live — La and Tui, the Spirit of the Ocean and the Moon, they look like two black and white koi fish, live in a pond. The Northern Water Tribe was built around the Spirit Oasis, and these two spirits help the Northern Water Tribe, and they are one of the reasons why the Northerners are doing better than the southerners.

Bing Xi Feng herself had a brother, Hao Feng Huang, who was a standard fire phoenix, now he lives in the Spirit World, but during the time that he was in the human world, this fire phoenix fathered offspring with ordinary birds, these descendants were less intelligent, but had all the signs of a fire phoenix. Bing Xi Feng hated her brother, so she stayed in the human world, unlike her brother, she never had offspring, which is why she was the only ice phoenix in the human world, and even in the Spirit World, she and her brother were unique spirits who appeared as the personification of the concepts of fire and ice, and as conceptual beings they are immortal, Bing and her brother

In general, it would be interesting to visit the Spirit World, but the portals leading to this world were closed by a real Avatar, only he can open it again ... well, or I need to die to get into the Spirit World. Even when the portal is closed, there is a lot of energy that allows me to grow stronger fairly quickly, and in the Spirit World, you can gain a lot of spiritual energy in the shortest possible time, because the whole world is made up of it... but I think if I get too impudent, then all the inhabitants of that world will try to kill me.

I don't have a way to enter the Spirit World yet anyway, and the energy that's leaking through the portal is quite enough for me right now. Little by little, I built my ice castle over the portal, more precisely, I changed the ice mountain Bing into a convenient home for myself, and by the next polar night, the ice palace was ready. I had placed my bedroom at the place of the highest concentration of spiritual energy, and this point was closer to the top of the ice mountain, and it was from this point that the blue-green aurora radiated. The rest of the rooms and halls in the ice palace were also filled with this blue-green glow, so I didn't have to worry about the lighting inside the palace.

If during the day my palace was just a boring mountain of ice, then at night everything changed dramatically due to the aurora borealis coming from inside the palace, you could admire this fabulous view for a very long time.

Now that I am constantly in this spirit-filled place, my strength will grow even faster, and strength is never superfluous. The Fire Nation keeps sending their warships to the south Pole, so they mostly want to take their damaged frigates back to the South Pole for repairs, but I know they'll be sent back here as soon as they're repaired, so I don't allow them to be towed to port in any way. All the ships that came to the rescue suffered the same fate as the previous ships.

As a result, the crew of these ships began to move in small groups to the port on boats, something more than a boat I did not miss... as a result, the Southern Invaders had to return to the port without ships, leaving them hanging out at sea. They will most likely return for them, but already with a fairly large fleet ... although not soon, the Fire People there seem to be active battles in the Earth Kingdom right now, and it is not profitable for them to spend resources to the south now, especially when these expenses do not bring any result, only even greater expenses and losses of ships, and it is still unknown who exactly attacked them. Alternatively, it was an Avatar, but it hadn't been seen for almost a hundred years, but there was another option — it was some evil spirit that appeared from the souls of the slain Water Tribe people. In this world, this sometimes happens, you can cut down a small forest, then the spirit that lived in this small forest will become evil, and will begin to take revenge on those who harmed its forest. With evil spirits, it is usually the Avatar who understands, he is the bridge between people and spirits, but for the Fire People, the Avatar is generally the number one enemy. Funny.