Leo had no clue what the three Nascent soul stage cultivators were doing, in fact, when the thunderhawk he mounted darted past the trio followed by the rest of the flock, he didn’t even notice them. Since the moment he landed on the thunderhawk’s head he was blanked out, holding on to the pole he stabbed in the beast’s head as if his life depended on it. Well … it kind of did.
It didn’t take too long for him to regain senses though. The moment the thunderhawk’s panic attack was over, it began to attempt to get rid of the uninvited passenger. It flew up into the sky and plummeted back to the ground, it shook its head, twisted the body and tried to throw Leo off using its wings. Unfortunately for the beast, the pike stuck in its head made it impossible because the more energetic its movements were, the tighter the hateful human held on to the pike and as the result it hurt even more.
The thunderhawk struggled for a while, but then turned to another tactic. It began to electrocute the human with it’s lightning Qi, but unexpectedly that didn’t work either. While the beast had not met any creature in life that could withstand its lightning blasts, to Leo it wasn’t more painful than swimming in the waters of the lake with the Divine tribulation trees. In fact, it actually stung less.
The rest of the flock helplessly followed their patriarch, from time to time letting out cries full of sorrow. At first they could keep up with it, albeit barely, but soon the difference between ranks was made clear. The patriarch began to rush forth so fast, Leo’s eyes teared up. The two soon left the rest of the flock far behind, albeit contrary to the human they knew where their leader was headed. They too had their nests on the same cliff.
The mad ride ended a while later when the thunderhawk slammed to the ground. Leo had no clue how long they had flown nor where they were, except that it was already nightfall and that they were on a top of a mountain.
It is hard to say if the last thunderhawk’s maneuver was because of the exhaustion or as the last attempt to shake off the annoying bastard who was to blame for everything, but it was partially successful.
The moment it landed, the pike finally fell out and Leo also almost fell off its head, but at the very last moment, purely on instinct, plunged the right hand in the hole the pike left behind. Inside was hot and wet, but Leo could clearly feel he touched something round and smooth, in a size of a large water melon.
For a split moment the bird felt the longed relief, only to realize his core was directly getting touched by someone else. In panic it tried to tear the evildoer away with its talons, but the best it could do was to tear his flesh and leave long bloody marks on his torso and legs.
It wasn’t that hard for Leo to figure out that within the next couple of attempts the bird will manage to tear him in halves, and he clearly knew that exactly that was going to be the inevitable result if he let the bird go. Left without a way out, Leo suddenly got a crazy idea. If cultivators used the beast cores as a cultivation resource and absorbed the Qi from them, why couldn’t he do it now? The only difference was that the owner of the core was alive, but so what? Right?
Just as the thunderhawk patriarch sunk its talons in Leo’s chest, it suddenly froze, paralyzed. It had no clue what the hateful human did, but all it felt was agonizing pain and the only part of the body that still moved were its eyelids. It collapsed to the ground, on top of Leo, and its the large, black eye stared directly in the face of its murderer.
“Hahaha! F*ck you, you stupid chicken!” Leo madly laughed and began to absorb the Qi from the thunderhawk’s core at increasing rate.
He didn’t feel sorry for the bird – it flew hundreds of miles in order to kill tens, if not hundreds, of humans, no matter if it was on its own violation or not. And now it was likely he himself was going to die even though he might defeat the beast. The rest of the flock surely will show up sooner or later and deal with him. The wounds he received after the bird landed were way too heavy to go against one, to not speak about dozen flying rank six beasts.
It is said that a peak seven rank beast’s intelligence is no lesser than that of a human. Indeed, even though Leo spitefully was absorbing its Qi, he could recognize the unwillingness and sadness in the beasts eye that stared back at him. He could swear the beast even let out a tear, but he was never fond of birds to begin with and now that one was about to kill him, there was no way he would show any compassion.
In the hundreds of years the thunderhawk had lived, it never imagined it would end this way. This was much worse than the most terrifying nightmare it ever had. Indeed, it was unwilling to give up, but it couldn’t do anything at all. But then, while still staring in Leo’s face, it got a similarly mad idea. Ignoring the pain, it suddenly fully focused on its core and the next moment the whole cultivation base of the peak rank seven beast erupted. Leo felt the core in his hand turning fiery hot, but responded in a similar fashion and increased the absorption rate, revolving his own core at the maximum and pushing his own cultivation to the limits.
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The two lie on the top of the cliff, staring at each other in mad hate, oblivious to the fact that in the night sky above them dark purple clouds began to form. Only when the first purple lighting bolt fell, Leo realized the bird’s intention, but even though he was likely to bleed out before he could witness the grand fiasco thunderhawk was about to experience, he still managed to laugh in its large eye.
“You dumb chicken! As if I give a f*ck about few lightning strikes!”
But after the third lightning Leo was forced to acknowledge that he had severely overestimated himself. The months and months of practice under the Divine tribulation trees had made him arrogant, thinking he had become invulnerable to any form of lightning. But this was the Heavenly tribulation lightning of someone who was trying to form a nascent soul.
Leo had no clue how the process technically went, but suddenly felt the same agony the thunderhawk patriarch was suffering. One after another lightning bolts rained on the duo that shone with purple light, but both stubbornly held on. Because of the paralysis their bodies slowly were getting cooked and probably it was already too late for either of them, but the hate the thunderhawk felt for the human had no bounds and Leo’s wish to ‘take the damn chicken’ with him was similar. They both were going mad from the physical and emotional pain, but neither was ready to give up.
Apart from few more or less important details, the process of reaching the Nascent soul stage involves merging the soul of a cultivator or a beast with their own core – in case of a cultivator it would be the core they formed in their dantian, while the beast used its beast core. In theory it’s somewhat similar to the process when a cultivator formed their golden core, except then they fuse the blood essence while solidifying the Qi in their dantian.
Of course, technically the process of becoming a spiritual life form and transcending the mortality of the physical body is much more complex, but while thunderhawk patriarch approached it on instinctual level, Leo couldn’t care less for the bird’s problems. His idea was simple – he had to absorb the Qi in its core to kill it as soon as possible to end the Heavenly tribulation.
On the other hand the thunderhawk raced in the opposite direction. As long as it managed to merge its soul with the beast core, the Heavenly tribulation would end. The problem was that the goal of the two was similar, but the means were harmful to the opposing party.
Leo had no clue how long he lasted or when he actually lost consciousness. The last thing he remembered was the reflection of his own smiling expression in the beast’s eye. It was a smile full of pain and sadness, but it was a smile of a winner. He felt how the beast’s life slowly died out in his palm and how its core lost the initial hotness, but he continued to madly absorb its Qi for one simple reason – the damn Heavenly tribulation kept hammering him with the purple lightning bolts!
The rest of the flock arrived right when the first lighting bolt fell from the sky and even though none of the birds had seen such phenomenon, their instincts kept them at bay. They kept circling the cliff where the life and even parts of the soul of their patriarch was getting absorbed, without any opportunity to help, crying in sorrow, feeling something terrible was happening.
They east was beginning to color red when the purple clouds began to disperse, but on the top of the lone cliff in the sea was left only a large pile of charred remains. The rest of the thunderhawks, all the lower ranks that had circled around keeping their distance, flew over, landed on the top of the cliff, the spot that belonged to their former patriarch and stared at the remains in dead silence. Obviously the storm brought by the Heavenly tribulation completely destroyed all the nests that were built on the cliff along with the eggs that lie in some of them, but currently birds were mourning the loss of their leader.
Who knows how long the silent ritual would’ve lasted if not for the charred pile suddenly moving. At first a hand appeared, then the other one, then Leo’s bold head poked out with a curse, “F*ck me! That was painful!”
Thunderhawks stared at the human crawling out from the remains of their patriarch in disbelief, but then suddenly a sense of dread filled them and they madly escaped. Leo was completely confused – the moment he noticed there were spectators, he expected that the beasts would attack him. But for some reason they decided to act like regular chickens.
Snickering at his own joke, Leo finally got on his feet and inspected himself. Strangely enough apart from the fact that he lacked any clothing and his hair was gone, he was completely fine. There were several fresh scars across his chest, stomach and legs, but he had so many it didn’t matter if there were few more. In addition, apart from the scarred spots, his skin was glossy and pink, and he felt refreshed and full of energy as if he just woke up after a good night’s sleep.
“How long I was out?” He murmured out loud.
The wounds the bird inflicted were deep and, possibly, lethal, but somehow he was completely healed. It wouldn’t have been his first time to be unconscious for days, it just worried him that he might’ve ended as bird food if the rest of the flock would’ve noticed him earlier.
Since there was nothing else he could do, Leo took out spare clothing from the amulet that was the only thing still in tact apart from him. Before getting dressed he quickly rinsed himself with the water he always had plentiful of and few moments later was ready to go. The bold head did make him look like a young monk, but he never really cared for his own appearance, except for the time he was a professional, of course.
“That’s what you get from messing with someone from the Renaud family, you stupid chicken!” Leo kicked the remains of the beast, but for some reason an overwhelming sadness overtook him.
It was so bad his eyes even teared up and, not being able to stand it, he turned around and rushed away. He could see the mainland somewhere far in the distance and even though the sun was high up, he knew it was towards the west, the direction he had to take in order to get back to Naryn.