5 years later.

It was in the early noon and the sun was beginning to lash out at the forest as if it had done it no good, but some days were rainy considering it was summer.

The sun on that day was hotter than other days, drying some parts of the soil in Doom Forest to a crisp - however, as hot as it was, It still didn't affect the training of a master and his disciple.

Wung Dao and his disciple were training nearer the cabin, Seth he called him? Well, it was more like his disciple was attacking the cultivator and Wung Dao was dodging every attack effortlessly like a leaf dancing in the wind. Xue Lan watched the two in the background, a spectator.

4 years ago, he had decided on abandoning his clan and was now a hermit alongside Wung Dao. Abandoning the clan bad been frankly quite easy , he didn't have anything attaching him there - having had no wife or children his entire life. What about loyalty? Oh that was nothing but a meaningless word to him , only blood oaths truly meant something. Xue Lan had no doubt the clan would leave him for the wolves if such a time came, so why wouldn't he do the same?

The animosity between Wung Dao and Xue Lan had evaporated with the chains of the clan which had been fueling it gone, though that didn't mean the two were now attached to the hip.

On some days Xue Lan would pay a visit to Wung Dao, and on some he would simply stay at his own cabin which he had built nearer to Wung Dao's and cultivate - aiming to become stronger. As neutral as the relationship between them was, Xue Lan considered himself to be somewhat an acquaintance of Wung Dao.

Wung Dao had initially passed a suspicious glance at the grey-haired cultivator who had beginning visiting the hermit frequently and relentlessly like a door-to-door salesman, but that suspicion had melted and was replaced with an uncaring attitude. Wung Dao could care less about what Xue Lan was planning really, Xue Lan was sure he thought of himself strong enough to outright overpower any malicious plans he had, not that he had any.

Xue Lan watched as Wung Dao's disciple dramatically leapt upward, slashing down at Wung Dao's direction. He scoffed.

'What a foolish mistake, doesn't he know leaping that high and slashing down at your opponent only gives them an opening to exploit?'

Xue Lan imagined Wung Dao unsheathing his blade and slashing at his disciple that momentarily hanged in the air. It would be swift and quick, and of course brutal.

But this was a training session and not a battle to the death, so Wung Dao instead leapt to the side - dodging the attack as effortlessly as the other attacks he had been showered with so far.

The disciple followed up the attack with another: his short blade began to be swarmed by a blue energy, which he released by slashing as it swam through the air towards Wung Dao, who happened to be just a few metres away in front of Xue Lan. As Xue Lan was registering that projectile attack, three more slashes were made at various angles.

Wung Dao dodged all four arcs course , and that meant they headed straight for Xue Lan.

'Hmm?'

His fingers on his right straightened and he swiftly deflected, no, crushed the projectiles as they came at him with flickers of his straightened hand.

The arcs dissipated into the air, having been destroyed. The disciple looked at Xue Lan with eyes as big as saucers, but he quickly regained his composure.

Xue Lan looked at him.

"Do you mind?"

The disciple shrugged.

"Meh, you volunteered to be a spectator on your own. You should have expected to be hit by some stray attacks at some point."

Xue Lan sighed but did not say anything.

Wung Dao's disciple had slowly become as shameless as his master over the years, having grown considerably taller too. The disciple's silver white hair was longer and was loosely tied behind him, swaying as he continued to attack Wung Dao.

Strangely, the more the disciple grew up and his features sharpened, the more the resemblance between him and Wung Dao increased. They behaved similarly of course, the disciple now being as quiet and reserved as his master but there was something about the way the two looked that made them a bit similar, like a father and a son.

Xue Lan was probably imagining it.

The sparring session continued, but Wung Dao chose to do something out of the norm in the duration of the spar and disappeared - actually moved at high speed that he must have appeared to have disappeared to his inexperienced disciple.

The pale teenager froze, and before he could do something about his disappeared master, the swordsman appeared behind him and placed his palm on his back, sending the disciple flying 18 metres away like a hurling rock.

And he crashed on a cabin, reducing most of into bits and pieces. Xue Lan had lost count of how many times Wung Dao's cabin had had to be repaired or built from scratch from how vigorous the two were with their training.

"Hey, that was unfair! You said you wouldn't fight back!"

The voice of the disciple cut through the debris, he then leaped out of it and began shaking some of it off himself.

"Nothing is fair, if this were a battle to the death with an enemy do you think they would have kept their promise? Don't be so naive. Now come, we need to train your skill in the art of the sword."

And with no further word said, Wung Dao turned and walked off into the deeper forest, his disciple following behind him as he had been expecting him to.

"Ah, I am never going to land a hit at this point. I don't see the point of the sparring sessions. "

The disciple mumbled grumpily as he followed, but if Xue Lan heard him from far away that meant Wung Dao did too of course.

"Complaining won't help you with anything. Instead of wasting that energy, use it to think of how you could have attacked me with more compromising and thought-out attacks. Like that downward lean and slash you attacked me with, I could have ended your life two thousand times during the fight. "

Wung Dao said in reply, though his pace didn't slow down.

'Brutal and straightforward as always'

His disciple kept quiet, seemingly in thought and he no longer seemed that intent on arguing with the cultivator.

Xue Lan watched up until the two disappeared into the forest, then he sighed.

He couldn't help but feel jealous, most of his days were either spent cultivating, drinking tea and having short conversations with Wung Dao or watching him and his disciple train.

Wung Dao on the other hand had the opportunity to do all that and to also impart his legacy onto his disciple. In the cultivator world, nothing was more precious and respected than having a disciple.

Most disciples were the pride of their masters, which was why when a core and personal disciple of a cultivator was murdered by an opposing faction, a blood bath usually followed.

Xue Lan hadn't chosen a disciple in the Iron Palm clan and had been an elder by title, thinking of the gesture as waste of time, but now he thought of his naivete as ignorance.

But wallowing in his regrets wouldn't get him anywhere, he turned and went to his own cabin which was safely a few metres away from Wung Dao's and was thankfully still in one piece.

'Hmm, I wonder if his disciple would be willing to also fall under my wing'

Xue Lan thought. A disciple having two masters to learn from was not completely unheard of, but it was quite superficially rare.

This was because when becoming a disciple, one learnt the path of his or her master - their techniques and arts, and it was a long ride till the disciple him or herself became proficient in using them. 20 years if they were geniuses but 8 decades as a minimum otherwise.

Now imagine if there were two masters, It'd take forever to master anything. And usually, the two masters didn't get along, each wanting to have more control over the disciple than the other so in the long run the collaboration ended with one having to be chosen over the other.

But it didn't hurt to try , Xue Lan would shelve this thought to bring it up to Wung Dao and his disciple someday.

**

As Wung Dao and Seth continued moving deeper into the forest, the number of surrounding trees increased, and the space become narrower.

They walked up until a familiar space came into eye, where several wooden dummies and two wooden swords lay waiting for them. Till to this day, Seth had never figured out how Wung Dao managed to build wooden things from scratch.

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Over the years he had learnt quite a lot to say so himself; but mostly he had decided on sticking to his new name and casting his old one - Ryan.

After that fateful day Seth had been initiated on, he had made quite a large leap in progress when it came to physical strength and stats. The strength in his arms was far more solidified; his bones felt sturdier and harder to break; his skin felt reinforced and harder to tear into like the scales of a crocodile; and his speed and his jumping ability had taken a leap (pun intended).

" This should be expected, the Body Fortification Pill is a pill which attributes physical characteristics of beasts to those that swallow it, beasts which have been part of the ingredients. You've gained the speed and jump of the horned rabbit, the strength of the armed gorilla, the tough skin of the crocodile and sturdy bones like the horn of boar. "

Wung Dao had explained to him. Being the greedy person he is, Seth had asked if Wung Dao couldn't make one more pill , but the cultivator had shunned him - saying that his body wouldn't be able to handle eating a second pill as he wasn't a cultivator, and the key ingredient which had been used to make the pill was finished. But overall, it was a gain.

Seth had also progressed from a black core stage to a brown core, and learnt how hard it was to progress in that aspect with a C grade talent. Actually, it was more like a C+ grade talent. Yes, that was right, Seth was now a C+ grade talent!

It turned out those 'increasing rate of absorptions' which were given as rewards from the system had more value than he had thought. He was now a few of them away from B minus.

He was now an adept hunter when it came to hunting beasts in the outer section of Doom Forest - which he had separated into outer, middle and deep parts. Oh and of course, now when Seth stared at himself in a river which was painfully far away from the forest - a handsome man usually stared back at him, a man who had long silver-white hair and a face that would put male models back on earth to shame.

'I've become the male-equivalent of a temptress!'

Seth wore better clothes which were more dignified than the rags he had worn when he was 14 : three pairs of blue pants which looked like a cross between jeans and trousers, nice white T-shirts long and short sleeves with something which looked like a scarf, and lastly of course a bunch of cultivator clothes which Seth would one day wear begrudgingly if it came to it. He also had a pair of military boots and cultivator sandals with socks. The clothing had been given by Wung Dao, who had no interest in explaining where he had gotten it.

However , the largest progress Seth had made was in his hand-to-hand combat - ever since the initiation he had been training with Wung Dao on a daily basis , they would divide their training sessions into two parts on most days - the first part would be spent with Seth mostly attacking his master trying to score a hit. He was ashamed to admit that in the five years he spent doing the task , he was yet to land one. It wasn't his fault that he happened to be against an old monster like Wung Dao , who happened to only use 5% of his power in their fights. Even more degrading, right?

The second part of the training session was spent doing something else - a dabble in the art of the sword.

Wung Dao walked over to one of the dummies and stood next to it in expectance of Seth to do what had become routine.

Seth walked over and picked up one of the wooden swords , walking towards his master as he was supposed to.

" As usual , repeat the stance and attack you have been failing to accurately pull of."

Wung Dao said in dismal. Seth might have been imagining it, but his master's voice sounded much more inpatient than usual.

He took a stride towards a dummy and slightly spread his legs apart, and then he lifted the wooden blade over his head and struck at it. A pang sound rang out.

Wung Dao looked slightly surprised.

"Oh , have you been practicing in private? Your stance has certainly improved... "

Seth hadn't thought that Wung Dao would notice.

"However , it still needs some work. That strike was sloppy. Hold your blade firmly with both hands, yes just like that.

Then don't just lift it over your head but make a twisting action with your body while doing so, this ensures that your strike gains the maximum lethality. Move your body forward in preparation of a strike then swing your blade diagonally at the target.

Don't strike as if you are having a spar with a friend , strike as if your life depends on it because in the future it will. "

Seth absorbed the information his master imparted on him, and he tried his best to follow the instructions, he twisted his body to the right and unleashed a strike at the defenseless dummy. Another pang sound rang out.

"Your stance has certainly improved. Repeat the attack up until I instruct you to stop. "

Seth sighed, he was no longer as surprised as before to Wung Dao's merciless commands.

He did as he was told, adjusting his stance as he relentlessly attacked the dummy with the same diagonal slash, attacking the dummy's shoulder blade.

He attacked five times, fifteen times, thirty times up until he reached a hundred and twenty times and started to feel the soreness of his shoulder. He didn't know how much time had passed then.

"You may now stop, your stance is passable as decent. "

Seth drew in a large breath, but did not say anything. He knew better than to complain.

'And now, I suppose I have to spar with him once more'

That was the next part of the session. Wung Dao picked the other wooden sword.

"Now let us see how skilled you are in the sword when you aren't fighting a dummy. "

Tats and pangs rang out across the forest as the two traded blow to blow - well, mostly with Wung Dao deflecting most of Seth's attacks and returning some of his own and Seth yet to land one himself.

But he had a plan this session, he waited for his master to leap at him with a piercing attack and he shifted to the side , dodging and counterattacking with a strike aimed towards the ribs. Wung Dao didn't fail to defend and blocked the attack with just a small movement of his wooden sword.

The fight continued , and what made it more enjoyable was the fact that Wung Dao didn't use any of his speed or his power to have an upper hand. It was simply a battle of wits and skill between two men who might as well have been powerless, fencing in the middle of a forest.

It reached a point where Wung Dao slashed horizontally at Seth's chest, who dodged by crouching his back backwards while simultaneously lifting his right leg to strike at the cultivator's face and prevent a horizontal follow up slash considering the close distance.

Wung Dao leapt backward to dodge, there being no better alternative. Seth took his chance.

He pulled his wooden sword backward and shifted his body forward as if preparing for a pierce attack , Wung Dao took the bait and raise his own wooden sword subconsciously preparing to deflect the pierce. But it didn't come.

Seth instead drew an arc across the ground towards the cultivator with his left leg twice, effectively kicking up dust which was hurled towards Wung Dao rapidly. To Seth's relief, Wung Dao didn't back immediately and simply stood waiting for whatever attack that would come from his disciple who was temporarily hidden from the snaring dust.

Seth risked it all and threw his wooden sword through the dust and towards Wung Dao, who grunted with obvious surprise , probably never expecting his disciple to do something so stupid.

The cultivator effectively deflected the projectile towards Seth like he had done so to most of his attacks , just in time for it to fall into Seth's reached out hand which timely grabbed the hilt of the wooden sword and struck at the cultivator from above. He had leapt before the thrown wooden sword even reached Wung Dao.

The cultivator's eyes slightly widened in shock and in any other case he would have dodged by deflecting the oncoming attack or shifting backwards but Seth was too close, and the element of surprise had caught the cultivator off guard.

He landed a square hit , right on the chest.

"Checkmate."

Seth said, not even bothering to hide the grin which began spreading all over his face.

* * *

Then the two walked back to the cabin.

After landing the hit, Wung Dao had laughed proudly and congratulated him.

Seth had never seen a smile so large from the stiff cultivator before.

" The first stance of Dao swordsmanship is the diagonal slash, the practitioner twists their body while keeping a wide enough gap between their legs then they strike at the target essentially putting their upper strength into the attack.

The second stance of Dao swordsmanship is a follow up attack, the leaping tiger. The practitioner puts their dominant leg in front of them , moving their upper body backwards and their sword even further backward before shifting their centre of gravity forward and make a piercing attack towards their enemy.

The last stance of Dao swordsmanship is the cleave and vertical slash. After performing the first and second stances , the practitioner slouches slightly down and dashes at the enemy, simultaneously slashing at the enemy's chest with a cleave, followed by a vertical slash in quick procession.

Those are the basic stances which you shall use to build your foundation, other secondary and third stances are built on that foundation. "

Wung Dao now instructed Seth solemnly, the soft and welcoming expression which had been there moments ago replaced with the rigid expressionlessness Seth had come to familiarize.

Seth made sure to memorize each and every word Wung Dao told him.

Though an uncomfortable feeling began to creep up to him as he thought of Wung Dao's sudden intensive instructions.

'He isn't dying from some disease, is he?'

He thought.

Cultivators weren't invincible, they could be killed by bacteria and viruses which adapted to their strong bodies, and most of the viruses were nasty and brutal. It was usually hard for one to get treatment or a cure because in the cultivator world if one didn't have a faction or a powerhouse they belonged to, then they had to fight to the death for almost everything.

Seth hoped his master hadn't been caught by a disease, they had come so far together.

At first , he had thought of his becoming a disciple as a death sentence, but fate wasn't so merciless and Wung Dao had become his pillar of support and someone to spend time with , something akin to a father figure.

The thought that death would claim him made his heart slightly constrict and his chest feel heavy.

"Master are yo-"

"I have a mission for you. "

Wung Dao's words quickly elapsed over Seth's.

"It's more like a delivery I'll need you to make for me. "

Seth furrowed his eyebrows.

"A delivery? To where?"

'We are in forest , where on earth could I be making the delivery to?'

"There's a village further north of this cabin, I have something I need to give to an old friend. If you leave early, you should arrive there in two days' time. It has been quite a while since we met , but if you ask around for the name Mei Li you should get where you need to be. "

Then Wung Dao took out something wrapped tightly in a cloth and placed it on the wooden table between them. The cabin had been rebuilt all over again.

"Do not open this, I trust you. But I should tell you that I have a way of knowing when it has been opened and by whom. Take your small blade with you , I have already prepared a few rations for the journey. Give her this letter for me and the item in the cloth. "

Then Wung Dao took out a small scroll and placed it on the table.

"And of course I'll know if you've prematurely opened this scroll as well. You must leave now while the sun is high. Here is a map."

Wung Dao said with a voice filled with an alarming urgency. Seth found himself nodding and automatically rising at the cultivator's words then taking the map from his hands.

He went to his room and took his belt where his pale Wyvern dagger which now had a make-shift wooden scabbard and a belt to hold the two. He also took the rations Wung Dao had placed on his futon, placing the small bags of dried meat and berries on his waist.

Seth felt as if he was going for a hunt again.

He went back to Wung Dao and found him drinking his cup of tea calmly in meditation.

He glanced at his master for a long time, before he turned to leave.

"Disciple."

Wung Dao suddenly said as Seth was about to leave.

"Yes master?"

Seth asked, turning to look at his master. Wung Dao's eyes bore into his and his face bore the soft expression of a proud father.

"I wish you good luck on your journey. "

Wung Dao said, then he smiled and bowed at Seth catching him slight off guard.

'Eh? Why is he suddenly emotional?'

Wung Dao had never been so expressive before, but Seth didn't think too much of it and simply bowed lower than Wung Dao.

"Thank you master, I must now leave. I shall be back in 5 days."

Wung Dao nodded, Seth then turned to leave - the cloth-wrapped object, the letter and the map with him.

He disappeared into the forest, heading for a village marked as Grem in a certain map.