Rivers of the Night

The Law of Preservation, a Law of the cooling path, felt so very broad. But honestly speaking… they all did.

What Theron was quickly realizing when studying Laws was that feeling out the first and immediate thought he felt toward them wasn't necessarily the right route to take.

The names of the Laws seemed to speak to him, which was how he knew their names so immediately and without effort. However, when he came to know those names, his mind felt biased in certain directions.

He had immediately thought of the Law of Density as something to make things heavier or lighter. However, when applied to the path of cooling and the path of heating, it was subtly different.

It wasn't just about making things heavier or lighter. It was about playing with the structure of Water itself, facilitating faster movement of heat or slowing it down, rearranging Water Mana and its molecules such that it benefitted heat more versus cooling more.

It was a far more complex application, one that required an understanding of Water Mana that, quite frankly, Theron wasn't sure many others had.

He had poured his entire being into control, and it was paying off—subtleties he hadn't been able to grasp before laying bare to him because of just how solid his foundation was.

Back in the Thistle Brook Imperial Academy, he had learned how to use the polarity of Water Mana to his advantage. He hadn't realized back then just how important that leap in Mana Control would be in grasping the intricacies of the Law of Density in this case.

And now, the Law of Preservation he was trying to learn for the cooling path, and the Law of Intensity for the heated path, were quite similar.

Preservation… when Theron thought of it, he immediately leaped to archaeology, an attempt to maintain what was old using the techniques of the new. Maybe refurbishing just the slightest bit, or unveiling what already was.

There were some aspects to those thoughts that seemed to speak to Theron for the sake of the cooling path, especially the parts about unveiling what already was.

The ability of Water Mana to sustain its current temperature was shocking. The amount of energy one needed to heat water up was, pound for pound, maybe amongst the highest in the world. This was why it was such an effective counter against Fire Mana.

The Law of Preservation seemed to tap into that, getting Theron to enhance more of those aspects of water, making it even more dangerous and difficult to stop.

But it wasn't just that. Preservation often required chill, to slow the world's effects on other things.

Theron had done a great amount of reading from his youth to today. He had heard of scientists using polar ice caps to decipher history from thousands of years ago. He had read about people using cold air and Ice Mancers to preserve bodies well beyond the point of death.

It was all about what aspects of Preservation he wanted to tap into, but as he thought these things through, there were whispers at the back of Theron's mind about just how odd all of this was.

Maybe it was just him, but when he thought about Laws, he felt like they should be rigid, already long decided by the world around him and the physics that dictated everything.

But deciphering these Laws… it felt more like he was a scholar again, cross-referencing resources to decipher a language. It was like he was becoming a linguistic expert more than a cultivator.

Was that really how the world of cultivation worked?

The fleeting thought came and went, and Theron found the Law of Preservation taking root within him, strong and firm, but he hardly paid attention as he was already focused on the Law of Intensity.

Suddenness, explosive power, bursting strength…

Water, when heated to the point of boiling, could carry with it an explosive amount of power. One of the many things the tenets had taught Theron was that he had to be careful with heating up rocks by the riverbank because the explosions that resulted could kill.

Rocks by rivers got there through unknown means, and various numbers of these means could end with water being trapped within them. If one heated rocks carelessly, the water inside could expand and shatter the rock, causing its bits and pieces to become shrapnel that could maim, injure, and kill.

Because of water's ability to resist energy change, it stored a great deal of power within itself as it progressed, and when that energy reached its tipping point…

BANG!

An explosion went off in Theron's mind, his thoughts going white. But he still felt like he was missing something.

The path he had gone down just now was a lot more about steam than it was about water. He had little, if any, ability at all to control steam. He hadn't checked since his stint in the Luminescent Moon Sect's Secret Realm, but he highly doubted that much had changed because he still felt so anchored to Water Mana.

The problem with the Law of Intensity was that in most aspects, Water Mana simply wasn't like that. Water tended to be patient, calm… it would erode away at you over long, extended periods of time—it wouldn't suddenly kill you in a burst.

But that was when Theron realized something else. Water had mass, it had density, and when it was forcefully constrained, squeezed, and forced to act in ways it wouldn't naturally…

When it was forced through a nozzle, when its stable structure was forced to heat up beyond its desired temperatures, when it faced oppression and just wanted to… burst right through.

The Law of Intensity… for some reason, Theron was finding himself thinking more and more in the abstract, not thinking about the Law in terms of the definition like he had before, but instead thinking of it in terms of his heart.

He too felt like Water sometimes… calm, unbothered, prepared to chip away slowly…

Until something opposed him and forced his hand.

The white in Theron's mind cleared, and the blue of his irises radiated like dense, flashing sapphire.