After bidding farewell to Elder Souma, a well-fed Dean, accompanied by Riven, departed from the Jianpai dojo nestled within the mountain hollow.
As they walked amidst the blooming mountain flowers, Dean's steps were light, while Riven, behind him, instinctively maintained a vigilant posture, like a wary, solitary female beast.
“We can teach you ionian on the way,” Dean said, carrying his pack and waving cheerfully at Riven. “If you plan to stay out of the imperial war, learning a foreign language is quite necessary.”
Riven nodded silently at his words.
“So, from now on, you might have to keep looking into my eyes and understanding my thoughts,” Dean continued. “I’ll keep speaking ionian, and you’ll understand what I’m saying through our special connection, then compare it to the ionian you hear. That should speed up your learning.”
“Ah?”
Riven had not expected Dean’s “learning ionian” to be through such a method.
Although this “comparison method” sounded quite effective, the thought of meticulously prying into the mind of a man she wasn't particularly familiar with still made her feel very awkward.
“So you need to speed up your learning as much as possible.” Dean wasn't going to give her a chance to object. “The faster you learn, the sooner we can start training and accelerate the progress of analyzing magic.”
Riven pondered for a moment, then chose to nod again.
After all, as Dean said, learning ionian this way was far more efficient and effective than conventional methods, especially since Riven had heard that ionian was unlike other languages; starting from scratch would likely waste a lot of her time.
No sooner said than done.
With her mind made up, Riven boldly initiated the conversation: “Can you tell me how you learned ionian?”
“I’d be happy to tell you,” Dean sighed, “but unfortunately, this part of my memory is sealed. I probably won’t be able to give you an answer until we find the Garden of Forgetting.”
“Then what else do you remember?” Riven stared into Dean’s eyes. “You seem like a person with many stories, but your demeanor is… a bit too easygoing.”
“Everyone is born a blank slate.”
“Born a blank slate?” Riven blinked. “That’s a strange way of putting it.”
“A small realization gained during my travels.” Dean stepped over a small puddle on the ground. “From the Immortal Bastion to Weili, I’ve seen too many different kinds of people along the way. Many people actually have a similar underlying nature, but they ultimately become different.”
“You escaped from the Immortal Bastion?” Riven’s focus diverged from Dean’s narrative. “The Immortal Bastion should be heavily guarded now, shouldn’t it?”
“Of course, heavily guarded.” Dean nodded. “I heard Master Shen appeared in the Immortal Bastion—though he was there to maintain the balance between the two realms, in Darkwill’s eyes, that meant an unsuccessful assassination.”
“Shen?” Riven mimicked Dean’s pronunciation. “It sounds like… a person’s name.”
“The Eye of Twilight, Shen.” Dean nodded. “It is indeed a name, and he is the leader of the Kinkou Order, where we are headed.”
“To be able to appear in the Immortal Bastion, even if I don’t know what you mean by ‘maintaining the balance between the two realms,’ he must be a powerful individual.”
“Shen’s power is beyond doubt, and more importantly, he always maintains self-control.” When speaking of Shen, Dean’s tone held a hint of respect. “If it weren’t for Shen, I probably wouldn’t have escaped so easily. He disrupted the Immortal Bastion’s defenses, and under the threat of death, Darkwill was no different from an ordinary coward.”
Noticing Dean’s undisguised disdain for Darkwill and his clear respect for Shen, Riven felt somewhat uneasy.
Although she had already decided not to fight for the corrupted Noxus, she still instinctively wanted to argue: “Your Majesty—Darkwill wasn’t like that in the past; he was once a brave warrior, personally braving arrows and stones in the blizzards of the North.”
“Come on.” Dean waved his hand. “If you’re talking about the great Northern War seven years ago, I can tell you clearly that Darkwill only put on a show.”
“A show?”
“Yes, he transferred the merits of several Northern Legion corps onto himself.” Dean curled his lip. “However, he was quite subtle about it that time, only taking a few merits from various battle groups and piecing them together. In the end, he only awarded himself a second-class Imperial Blade Medal, nothing too excessive.”
Riven’s eyes widened in astonishment.
“I was awarded a medal with him at the time,” her voice was full of disbelief, “He didn’t seem like that kind of person.”
“Then I guess you were serving in Urzeris at the time?” Dean raised an eyebrow. “Receiving a medal with Darkwill yet not knowing about the messed-up things he did in the North, it could only have been a recipient from the Southern Legion at that time.”
Riven said nothing, implicitly confirming Dean’s judgment.
“I heard that at the award ceremony, Darkwill personally took the medal and pinned it to his own chest?” When mentioning that award ceremony, Dean was clearly quite gossipy. “And he even said… this was to accept the award for the sacrifices made in the North?”
Riven nodded.
“That’s truly ironic,” Dean scoffed. “If it weren’t for his reckless command, attempting to expand the war and delegating all command authority to the various battle groups of the Northern Legion, at least a third fewer lives would have been lost.”
“You’re very clear about these things?” Riven finally couldn’t help but voice her doubts. “If what you’re saying is true, these are probably absolute secrets of Noxus.”
“Although most of my memories are sealed, based on the parts I still remember,” Dean’s tone became a bit uncertain on this topic, “I used to have a special identity, perhaps as a Noxus Warmason… at least on the surface, because many of my unsealed memories are about such clandestine Noxus information.”
“I see.”
Riven said no more, but a faint feeling of shared suffering stirred within her.
For Riven, who was accustomed to following orders, now that she had suddenly left the battle group environment and was trying to think for herself, she inevitably projected her own feelings onto others—in her view, perhaps Dean, like herself, had seen the sordidness hidden beneath the empire’s glittering facade and had chosen to leave, only to be captured by the Black Rose and ultimately become a pitiful prisoner and experimental subject?