“Ok, seven left.” Leo mumbled and took out the Cleaver again.
While his kicks and punches landed on the beasts non stop, they lacked the lethality necessary to actually end the fight in his favor. The oversized kitchen knife though left bleeding wounds and even cut off extremities now and then.
The problem was that Leo was alone while there was a bunch of beasts attacking him and, while they obviously continued to damage one target, his desperate counterattacks were divided among all attackers. ‘Fortunately’ during the past months he got beaten up by Rudy and Rusty on a regular basis and now the attacks from the rank six beasts were akin to tickles in comparison to what the two Nascent soul stage beasts did to him.
Despite the newly found way of hurting the beasts, most wounds Leo inflicted were not life threatening and the more he hurt the beasts, the crazier they became. Roars of anger and pain resounded in the area while the attacks of the wounded beasts got more and more intense. Already the first attacks were crazy, but now the highly evolved rank six beasts had lost the last bits of sanity.
It came to the situation when they began hitting and biting each other in order to get to Leo first and it didn’t take long for the youth to find himself in a corner, pressed in against a wall, both literally and figuratively. And, while using large amounts of Qi in a single Lightning dash allowed him to get away from the particular predicament, it was only a matter of time till he got overwhelmed.
Fortunately he got lucky again and that gave him another idea. While evading the relentless attacks, Leo managed to cut the abdomen of another attacker and it and a couple of others immediately got tangled up in that beast’s guts. From that moment on Leo halted the chaotic swinging of the Cleaver and focused on the belly parts of the other beasts. He did get hurt more himself, but the damage he caused was worth it.
Within the span of twenty breaths Leo managed to wound three more beasts in a similar fashion. As the result the street was covered in a web of intestines that caught the madly roaring beasts, allowing Leo to finally have more or less stationary targets. And finally the Cleaver could shine.
Either he had gotten to used to the darkness or his vision during the fight improved, not only Leo could sense the locations, but also recognize the silhouettes of the beasts. It was the whole different world when he could calmly focus on an all-out attack and show where his weapon got its name from. One after another the beasts got nicely cleaved in halves and were put out of their misery, and when the last beast fell, despite it putting up quite a bit of resistance, Leo could catch some breath.
He heavily slumped on the ground and took several deep breaths, trying to calm down, but no matter how one looked at it, this had been quite a fight. Thinking about it he realized what an enormous improvement he had during the past months and how vital for his own cultivation was to use the environment that divine tribulation trees provided.
When he was done resting, Leo got up and began cutting the skulls of the beasts open. The ape-like beast heads, probably because of the time he spent with the silver-backs those years ago, always resembled human faces to him. But this time he slashed the heads open like pumpkins with wide grin on his face – the rank six cores were the most valuable currency he could currently get his hands on.
There was one problem though, a big one. And Leo noticed it only when he looted the last core.
A huge ape, over four yards tall, stood right next to the battlefield. Its huge nostrils flared and the small, black eyes beamed with hatred at the puny human who had the audacity to kill his kin and desecrate their bodies afterwards. The moon behind the ape made it look even bigger and scarier and at that moment Leo was ready to question himself whether the whole situation was real.
‘Right! The moon!’ He forced his brain to produce a logical conclusion and realize why he suddenly could see in the dark just to get out of stupor.
And it was at the very last moment, because ape landed right next to the youth a heartbeat later. Leo barely managed to roll away when two large fists slammed at the spot he just stood at. Apparently the idea that the rank seven ape cared for its kin was simply stupid – because of the punch their remains flew all over the place, covering the walls of the nearby buildings, Leo and the ape itself in blood, other bodily fluids and excrements.
Leo couldn’t care less for how he looked although the smell made him slightly nauseated. He dashed around the street, jumped on buildings and then back down, while the crazed ape followed him, causing destruction on every step. Obviously Leo knew every rooftop he escaped to was somebody’s home, but his own skin was incomparably more valuable than the damage to the real estate the ape caused. He had only one thought in mind – he had to get to the closest group that had a Nascent soul stage cultivator and hope for them to save him.
For a while Leo kept zigzagging through the suburbs, barely escaping the ape who apparently got more enraged with every passing moment. If one looked from above, it would’ve seemed as if a desperate insect was trying to find a way out in a maze, but a crazed critter was charging trough walls in order to get to it.
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When the first rays of sun colored the east, it did set Leo’s mind at ease for a bit, since he felt that finally human experts would notice the predicament he was in, but then his feet grew cold. Turns out he was trying to escape by going the wrong way! He was running out of the city! And another the problem was that all this time Leo thoughtlessly channeled enormous amounts of Qi to his feet to fuel the mad escape and he felt like his tanks might run dry any moment!
‘Wait!’ Leo did the best to calm down himself, ‘This guy is clearly slower than the damn hamster at the lake. Maybe he’s not rank seven? Maybe he’s still rank six, but just at the peak or something? In that case …’
With this though Leo suddenly turned around and darted towards the ape at the fastest speed his Lightning dash could muster. He was only a couple yards away when the giant ape froze, literally, and just when the Cleaver landed on the ape’s chest, three invisible blades cut off its head and both arms. Leo’s hit left only a scratch in the thick skin, but from the impact the huge body slightly swayed and then fell backwards, destroying another shack.
“How did you notice us?!” Lily’s angry question remained completely ignored.
She and the other two Nascent soul stage students from their group landed next to Leo and, while Musa and Mark had more complicated expressions, she seemed to be downright angry. Leo stared at the dead, decapitated body in stupor and it took some time for the events to register in his head. In addition, the speed and ease the three disposed of the ape was way too shocking for a country bumpkin like him.
Besides the crazed sect master Leo hadn’t had the chance to witness any Nascent soul stage cultivator in action so this was quite an eye opener. Of course, there were also Fan Lia and George Cilin, but one couldn’t take the bickering between the two seriously so that didn’t count.
“What?” Was the only thing Leo managed to blurt out, but it seemed to irritate Lily even more since the other two felt the air temperature suddenly plummet.
“We understand you could sense the buildings with the people hiding in and avoided them on purpose, but what Lily asks is how did you notice us? How did you know there is no need to escape anymore?” Musa said, trying to help out.
“Hahaha! I thought that running is the only thing elder Li is teaching him! We barely caught up!” Mark said with a tinge of ridicule in his voice, “Turns out he knows something besides how to quickly move legs!”
“Hmph!” Lily snorted and flew over to the ape’s head that had rolled further away. She kicked it towards Mark and said, “Get the core. We are not that rich to let a rank seven core lie around!”
Leo was still blanked out when the other nine squad members arrived. Alice did initially intend to run up to him in order to ask how he was, but stopped three, four yards away, trying to hide the disgust in her expression.
Her presence helped Leo to return to the reality and, following the ridiculing eyes of the rest, he looked down at himself and realized the reason.
His whole body was covered in a thick layer of dirt mixed with blood, organ pieces and excrements … and he smelled really bad. On the other hand the rest of the squad did have some bloodstains, mostly from the blood of the beasts they killed, while Lily didn’t even have a single drop of blood on her clothing. This was beyond embarrassing.
“Don’t worry about it!” Alice tried to console him, “It was quite heroic to lead the rank seven beast away from the city.”
“I …” Leo intended to confess that it was an honest mistake, when Lily interrupted him.
“That! Was! Stupid!” She said three words, but to Leo felt like he had been punched three times.
“Alright! It’s enough!” Musa said, dispelling the unpleasant atmosphere, “Leo, are you capable of going back or you need to rest?”
“I’m fine.” Leo lied.
Once again his core had shrunken to the size of a peanut. Of course, it was fine to run for half a day, especially if he wasn’t going to carry the Cleaver, but the thought of the efforts of the past half year wasted made him desperate.
When the group returned to the academy later in the afternoon, even the elder at the teleportation platform ordered Leo to go and take a bath before listening to Musa’s report. Either it was a coincidence or elder Li waited for Leo to clean up, he appeared right when the youth had put on a fresh set of clothing.
“You can go back to the lake. I’ll call you before the next deployment.” He said and vanished.
Leo was left happy and slightly confused. Obviously he was happy because he could ‘legally’ cultivate at his dream spot, but confused because he had no clue how much time he had. After weighing the options he decided that there will be other occasions to hang out with the guys from the Golden city, but there was no guarantee he’ll be allowed to the lake again. His core was so small every moment of cultivation mattered and he had no time to waste.
During the next month Leo never stepped off the island. The three Nascent soul stage beasts were bewildered why he didn’t try to harass them, but Leo was too busy absorbing Qi and cultivating.
To his great surprise the core returned to its previous state in just over five days, but afterwards the growth slowed down significantly. Nevertheless Leo continued to work hard and when the time came and elder Li called for him, he had made quite an advancement and the beautiful purple core within his dantian had grown to the size that was only a tad smaller than a fist.
He did ask the elder about it, but the answer was that because of his peculiar mutation there was no set rule how the Qi in his body should work and that included the core. More precisely, there were rules like with everything else in the nature, except the elder tasked Leo to observe himself and find out what they were on his own.
Obviously elder Li wasn’t going to admit he had no clue and Leo was the first with the lightning mutation to make this far, at least from what he knew. Fortunately he warned the youth to be careful and report any peculiarities that he noticed.
This short conversation was the first one that resembled an actual one between a master and his student. What Leo didn’t know was that it happened mostly because elder Li softened up to the him after hearing how Leo heroically let the rank seven beast away from the city in order to save the civilians. Even if he knew it was too late for Leo to set things straight in this matter and already upon stepping on the teleportation platform on the way back he swore to himself to take this secret to the grave.