Everyone ate the simple vegetable stew fully concentrating at the task at hand. Youths from both sects were long used to such food and didn’t complain, in addition, during expeditions even elders pretended to not noticed how a spirit herb or two landed inside the pot now and then, thus the seemingly simple meal actually was quite delicious and beneficial.
After everyone was done, Brandon easily kept up a small talk while the dishes were washed in the brook and when finally juniors gathered around the bonfire again, he returned to the main subject of the day.
“Lady Barbra!” He began, “What would you say if we decided the order of picking the foraging locations based on the respective strengths of our groups?”
“What?” She smiled in return, “Are you going to bully a girl?”
According to Leo, senior sister Barbra had the character of an old witch, but in reality she was a normal young woman, albeit a bit fiery one. Similar to Brandon she was bored out of her mind while babysitting juniors and now that the danger has passed, she quite enjoyed the company of these two fine specimens form the Sword Mountain.
“Heavens forbid!” Brandon exclaimed exaggeratedly, “As a gentleman I refuse to even consider it, but letting our juniors to exchange pointers could turn out to be a valuable experience for both parties.”
“If you mean ‘spar’, just call it a ‘spar’.” Barbra shrugged.
She already knew they were on the loosing side, therefore wasn’t thrilled about the next part.
“Well, spar is for brutes. We’re all here practitioners of the sword, thus the terminology, lady Barbra.” Brandon patiently said.
Disciples from the Sacred Order paled at the realization that they would have to go against naked blades. They haven’t even stepped into bone reforging stage and a regular mansion guard with a sword could defeat them, to not speak about someone who had actually practiced it. Their leader obviously understood that as well.
“Hmmm …” Barbra touched her chin while thinking, “We might have a problem there. In the Alchemy division it is a rule to bring staffs on expeditions and leave our swords behind. It’s a weird rule, but it is what it is …”
“I thought about that too.” Brandon immediately agreed. He was not blind, obviously, “To not harm our disciples they would use something that imitates swords, wooden sticks, for example.”
The cheeky Barbra was going for this from the very beginning. And she already had an idea how to cheat the next part.
“Sounds reasonable.” She said, “But how do we decide who’ll take part in the competition?”
“Well, we’ll pick one of our disciples and you – one of yours …” Brandon got confused.
“Obviously, but the problem is that none of my kids has gone through the body refinement stage, you know?” Barbra said with a sigh as if she was a mother whose offsprings brought nothing but disappointment.
This was a huge shock to the opposing party. As a general rule in all sects disciples without any cultivation were only outer disciples and never took parts in expeditions like this one. Creating a group to forage in a foreign realm that consisted of one Foundation establishment cultivator while the rest were basically common citizens was simply stupid. The risks were too high even if their expert elder joined at a later date.
The problem was that no one could prove Barbra was lying. While high level cultivators could discern the cultivation levels of beginners by infusing Qi in their bodies, regarding this procedure Foundation establishment and thus – Barbra, Brandon and Jasper, fell into the category of beginners. No one here could guarantee to accurately guess the level of the opposing side.
Of course, at this point many Sword Mountain’s disciples thought Barbra was full of sh*t, but it all would come into the light the moment two people actually compared their skills.
This was also what Brandon thought and therefore didn’t argue.
He thought for a moment and said, “Then there is no way around it. Pick your strongest guy and we’ll just draw straws to see who’ll go. You see – everyone in our group, but me and Jasper, is at the bone reforging stage. Unlike you guys, we’re not alchemists – they’ve been sent here as a punishment for different misdemeanors, but the two of us have to babysit them. Thus it might turn out one sided, but please don’t take it as offense, lady Barbra.”
“Sigh. It’s fine.” She pretended to dismiss his worries with a wave of her hand, “But different realms have different standards as well, don’t you agree. What if our alchemists are stronger compared to a regular muscle?”
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She smiled cheekily at the end, but both Brandon and Jasper began to find that adorable. Of course, what she said was silly, but they didn’t mind.
When the contender from the Sword Mountain, a guy of a medium build, was chosen and came forward, Barbra took a look around pretending to be worried, but in the end sighed and said, “Lost Leo! You’re up!”
Leo was as confused and shocked as the rest when Barbra called out the nickname he hated. The whole time he harmlessly sat at the side peaking at Brandon’s sword and fantasizing, but the mean witch decided to punish him again for who knows what.
And from what it looked like it was actually the case.
“If you slack off, I’ll reduce your contribution points to zero!” Barbra loudly stated.
For Leo it was not the problem she would reduce anything since he already didn’t have any points remaining, the problem was that she kept picking on him. For others it also kind of looked as if the young madam was abusing the child.
“Oh? Your sect has implemented the merit point system that is widely used in the immortal realm?” Brandon tried to dissolve the awkwardness in the air.
“You are most knowledgeable!” Barbra smiled back and said, “But we have a lot of great things in the Sacred Order that are used in the Immortal world, therefore we can’t blindly take advantage over you. Lost Leo over there might be the youngest and weakest, and has not managed to go through the body refinement stage, but I’d suggest to not look down on him.”
Out of everyone in the world she knew the best how tenacious the little guy was. Lately Barbra sometimes couldn’t even catch him reliably to not speak about the hurting palms and knuckles after ‘schooling’ him. If anyone, this guy was the only one who could save the face of their group. In the worst case scenario he would only get his ass kicked and that would teach the little bastard how to properly speak about ladies. To her big disappointment Sacred Order’s men were not as polite and chivalrous as the guys from the Sword Mountain.
While everyone else tried to guess what kind of bad blood was between the damsel and the harmless looking boy, Jasper got up, grabbed the staff Leo awkwardly held and broke it in two. Then he passed one part back to Leo and threw the other one to his junior brother who couldn’t figure out why he was the one who had to hurt a child.
People who cultivated sword techniques usually were proud cultivators. They had their own code of honor and despised needless hurting of the weak. The disciple who had to spar with Leo also had these ethical conundrums, but in the end he decided to simply go easy and show his superiority with techniques.
For the next thirty or maybe forty breaths Leo got stabbed, poked and bruised with the stick in his opponents hand. He did his best to retaliate, but the hateful guy somehow managed to parry or deflect his hits no matter from what angle Leo attacked.
The onlookers clearly saw that the boy was a complete newbie and his elder sister didn’t plant a wolf hidden in sheep’s clothing. He had no clue how to properly hold a sword and never even positioned himself in any basic stance.
In Leo’s defense all the exercises they practiced up until now were intended to bring out the potential of the person so they could easier step through the beginning stages of cultivation. People in the Sacred Order were not weak – there were many masters, but the tradition was to start to practice the real combat techniques only after getting to the Qi condensation stage. Thus up until now the real fighting techniques Leo learned were regarding how to defend against a wolf or a snake with a staff.
Everyone felt pity for the poor boy and even his opponent decided that enough was enough. He had to admit that the kid was incredibly tenacious, but the abuse like this was too much.
With an elegant, long step forward, he lowered his body and stretched the stick in his hand far to the front imitating a thrusting motion with a sword and poked Leo in the middle of his chest.
“Ouch! … ouch … ouch!” Leo fell back rubbing the spot that was just hit, “What did you do that for?”
He sounded really upset, but the onlookers were stupefied. Did the kid not understand what they were actually doing?
Leo, of course, understood, but up until now he could more or less bear the pain from pokes and hits. To be honest it was nothing compared to how apes abused him at first, to not speak about Barbra’s ‘sparring lessons’. He simply couldn’t get why the guy who was obviously five or six years older than him had to poke him so hard.
His opponent didn’t feel good about what he did, but this was a spar, so he said, “I stabbed you with a sword. You’re dead.”
Leo gawked at him for a moment, but then for the first time in his life became really angry and under everyone’s shocked eyes smacked the guy’s forehead with the stick as hard as he could. It happened so fast no one managed to react and the hit was so heavy the stick broke in halves.
“That’s not a sword! It’s a stick! … Idiot …” Leo angrily said, but a complete silence enveloped the campsite.
If this had been a sword practice, there was no doubt who was the winner, but the boy’s argument was sound. In addition, the lifeless body on the ground also proved his point.
Seeing his bigger opponent fall down, Leo slightly panicked, “Oh, I’m sorry!”
Then he squatted down next to the body and began shaking it, “Hey mister, wake up! Hey!”
“He’s fine!” Jasper reacted first and decided to spare the embarrassment for his junior brother. He picked him up by the belt with one hand and carried the body to the nearest tent so easily as if it was an empty bucket.
Brandon reacted next. He said, “What our junior brother said is correct. It’ll be a good lesson for you all to remember the circumstances you are in at any given moment. Adrian would’ve won after the first exchange if this was a real sword fight, but this spar wasn’t.”
Leo stared at the smart*ss in disbelief. If this was a real sword fight he would’ve ran away long before it started! He wasn’t the smartest kid in the world, but he wasn’t that stupid. He clearly knew he had no sword skills! What was there to compete with?!
Brandon found himself in a bit of a pickle. If every disciple of the Sacred Order was this tough, his junior brothers might have hard time dealing with them even if the opponents had no clue how to fight properly.
He looked at the crowd at the side deep in though, but then his eyes lit up. This was going to be fun!