Gu Yue grabbed Arthur's wrist, her fingertips carrying a faint coolness. "Come on, come on! Once we're done looking around, I'll teach you everything I know about controlling elements. I've even got plenty of tips on conserving soul power."
Conserving soul power.
Arthur had to admit, that got his attention.
His wrist firmly in her grip, Arthur watched the cheerful figure bouncing ahead of him and suddenly found it amusing.
Just moments ago on stage, she had radiated an overwhelming presence, the undisputed ruler of the entire arena.
Now she looked like a little girl clutching candy, dragging a friend along to play with her.
Arthur smiled helplessly, but let his feet follow along with her pull. "Fine, but you'd better keep your word."
"Of course!"
Gu Yue called back without turning around, pulling him out of the academy and straight toward a snack street near East Sea City's academy.
They had barely stepped through the entrance when Gu Yue pointed to a small shop hung with warm yellow lanterns.
"This new 'Handmade Candy Shop' first. Their candy is the best on this whole street, and they have all kinds of shaped molds."
Inside the shop, the owner was stirring syrup in a small pot. The air was thick with the sweet scent of caramel and fruit.
Gu Yue pressed up to the counter on her tiptoes, finger tapping against the glass jar. "I want these ones with the ripple pattern, and those strawberry-flavored star candies."
She dug coins out from her pocket as she spoke, adding, "And throw in two extra mint ones. We'll need them after the sweet cakes to cut the richness."
Leaving the shop with the candy jar in hand, Gu Yue unwrapped a mint candy and popped it in her mouth, then held one out to Arthur. "Try it. It's cool and refreshing. It'll keep the sweet cakes from feeling too heavy."
Then, as if she'd suddenly remembered something, she bounced forward and tugged Arthur deeper into the street. "The 'Sweet Wave Stall' is just ahead, and their freshly baked sweet cakes take ten minutes. I'll go put in an order now. We can check out the craft shop next door while we wait."
"Gu Yue," Arthur said, watching her navigate the street without a second's hesitation, "have you been through every single dessert shop on this street?"
"More or less."
Gu Yue seemed to be in fine spirits.
The craft shop's shelves were lined with dessert-themed trinkets. Gu Yue spotted two small ceramic spoons immediately, each handle shaped like a plump little sweet cake.
She held them up and compared them, then turned to Arthur. "What do you think? We can use these to eat the sweet cakes."
Without waiting for his answer, she had already paid, plucking one out and pressing it into his hand. "Here. Use this to scoop with. The spoons that shop gives you aren't nearly as nice."
Pulled along the whole time by an enthusiastic Gu Yue, Arthur suddenly realized that inviting him had probably been incidental. Even if he had said no, she likely would have made this exact trip on her own.
At the "Sweet Wave Stall," the owner had just brought out a fresh tray of sweet cakes. The golden crust looked irresistible, and the warm sweetness hit Arthur's nose before he even sat down.
Gu Yue led him to the window seats. She had noticed, from back in their junior academy days through to now, that Arthur always preferred sitting near a window.
She dug in an oversized spoonful without hesitation, scalding her mouth but refusing to let go, mumbling through a mouthful: "Come on, you try it too. It's so good."
The two of them took turns scooping away at the cake.
When they had finished, they ordered two glasses of fruit juice.
It seemed the moment had settled into something comfortable. Gu Yue asked, without preamble, "Arthur, what do you think elements are?"
She tilted her head slightly. "Or rather, how do you see the various elements that exist in the natural world?"
Arthur frowned, turning the question over for a moment. "They're a kind of extraordinary power. Why are you asking?"
To him, elemental power had always seemed similar to spirit souls, soul power, and spirit abilities, just another category of mysterious force.
"To use elemental power well, you first need to understand it." Gu Yue shifted into teaching mode, her tone taking on the patient, deliberate quality of a mentor guiding a student step by step.
"How many elements do you think exist in this world?"
Arthur began counting them off mentally. "Wind, water, fire, earth, ice, light, darkness, space..."
There were far too many to count easily. Some forces he wasn't even sure could be classified as elements at all.
"Those count, more or less," Gu Yue said with a light smile. "But the ones that truly qualify as elemental power? There are only four."
"Only four?"
Coming from anyone else, Arthur would have dismissed that outright.
But the one saying it was the Silver Dragon King.
So he could only believe it, and take in every word.
"Earth, wind, water, and fire." Gu Yue spoke with startling conviction, more serious than he had ever seen her. "The others, light, darkness, space, they may be powerful."
"But measured against the path of the elements, they don't compare."
"If you walk the path of pure light, or pure darkness, or space alone, and push it to its absolute limit, yes, you could reach something great."
Gu Yue lightly tapped the rim of her juice glass. A thin layer of frost crept across it, tendrils of cold air curling outward.
"But if you want to build something meaningful within the vast elemental system, you have to pour your efforts into these four: earth, wind, water, and fire."
"These four are the true path to the heavens!"
Earth, wind, water, fire.
Arthur turned his small spoon over in his fingers, eyes resting on the frost forming along the glass.
What Gu Yue said genuinely shifted something in how he thought about elements.
In everything he had ever learned, elemental categories were sprawling and varied, with light, darkness, and space treated as rare, elite forces above the rest.
Yet from Gu Yue's mouth, it was earth, wind, water, and fire that formed the true "path to the heavens."
"Why those four?" He set the spoon down and leaned slightly forward. "Isn't ice just a variant of water?"
Gu Yue's eyes lit up at that. She reached out and touched the frost on the glass.
With a faint pinch of her fingertips, the tiny crystals melted into water drops in her palm, and then instantly turned to mist and dispersed.
She pulled her hand back with a smile, a small smear of sweet cake cream still at the corner of her mouth. "Ice is just a change in water's state. Earth, wind, water, and fire already encompass all things. Light, darkness, space; they're either derivatives of the four, or forces that sit entirely outside the elemental framework. They don't truly qualify as elemental power."
She scooped up a spoonful of sweet cake, but didn't eat it. Instead, she held it out in front of Arthur. "Take this sweet cake. It can already be described entirely through the four elements. Actually, I have a theory."
"The destination at the end of the four-element path is the ability to create all things."
"Create all things..." Arthur was genuinely stunned.
"Ha, it's just a guess, don't take it too seriously." Gu Yue caught herself, laughing it off. "Just something I said on a whim. It's nothing more than a little daydream of mine."
Gu Yue truly admired Arthur's talent with elements, especially after the months they had spent together.
The elemental power he displayed from time to time had shown her his potential time and again, and even viewed through the eyes of the Silver Dragon King, his spirit soul was breathtakingly extraordinary.
If her read was correct, the new element Arthur would gain command of after breaking through to the four-ring Spirit Ancestor stage would be earth.
His first four rings had locked precisely onto earth, wind, water, and fire, pointing straight to the core, leaving no room to waste time wandering toward lesser elements. That, to Gu Yue, was what made Arthur truly remarkable.
The more she came to understand him, the more she wanted him at her side.
With a talent like this to aid her in the future, what could stand in the way of restoring the spirit beast realm?
---
After seeing some comments, I should clarify: I haven't read Douluo Dalu IV, I genuinely couldn't get through it. If anything here conflicts with its established lore, please point it out and I'll try to avoid those elements going forward.