Strangely enough the next morning no one mentioned the last night’s events. Leo was not bothered with that although it did feel a little strange how his fellow disciples seemed to avoid him. He needed some space to make plans, but the hateful Barbra had to spoil everything.
When the disciples of both sects gathered, except for Adrian and Curtis, that is, she announced, “In order to strengthen the friendship between our two sects, we decided to create a small competition. The one who’ll have the best results will be rewarded by elder brother Brandon giving them a personal lesson in sword arts. I think anyone of you will appreciate that.”
Her beaming counterpart also jumped in. He said, “To keep the competition fair, you’ll forage at the same slope. But remember – no fighting is allowed. The one who gets to the plant first, picks it. We’ll keep a close eye on the discipline! Understood?”
Seeing everyone nod, Brandon pointed at one of the slopes that he probably chose randomly and commanded, “Go!”
No one here was on an expedition for the first time, therefore there was no running or rushing. Everyone orderly proceeded towards the mountain and only slightly spread out on the way.
Leo was somewhere in the mix, but for some reason he felt a murderous stare stabbing his back. It didn’t take long for him to realize that most likely the Sword Mountain couldn’t forgive last night’s embarrassment and now intended to take revenge in secret. His good friend Jack had mentioned the concept of ‘killing intent’ multiple times and probably this was what he currently felt.
In reality Brandon only asked Jasper to keep an eye on the little devil while he ‘sealed the friendship’ between two sects in a different way. There was no killing intent nor stares, but because Leo had reached the Qi gathering stage, he simply felt someone watching him.
The foraging didn’t go very well. The slope was still muddy and wet, but fortunately this was a better spot and one after another cheerful shouts filled the air. Leo didn’t pay much attention to the search for spirit herbs – for some reason he felt a strange unease. Of course, he decided it was because of that ‘killing intent’ thus there was only one solution – he had to rush further up to see who was the one following him.
With this thought in mind he charged up the slope leaving everyone behind, but the rest of the disciples quickly recognized the small figure dashing up the mountain. And there was only one reason why someone would act so recklessly – they had noticed a precious herb, maybe even heaven ranked, somewhere higher up the slope! No one wanted to let this opportunity to slip by.
When few moments later Leo glanced over his shoulder, he noticed over fifty people chasing him and ‘realized’ that both camps had decided to get rid of him. As the result he was left with only one option – to increase the speed.
Truth to be said, Leo had it much easier than the rest. Mostly because he was smaller and lighter, and contrary to the disciples from the Sword Mountain he didn’t carry a sword.
Jasper had it especially hard. Even though he was the strongest, with every step he stuck knee deep in the mud and for the first time in his life he considered to drop his sword. The devil spawn had clearly something bad in mind and he had the obligation to stop him.
Cursing Brandon for being absent at the crucial moment he roared loudly to the sky and charged up. That encouraged the rest of the disciples who followed the suit, but scared Leo out of his mind. The huge guy with the big sword was the last one he wanted to be one of the pursuers, therefore even though he was long out of breath, Leo persisted and continued to rush upwards.
Who knows how it would’ve ended if not for the nature joining the game the humans played. When Leo was over two miles above the camp, he suddenly felt the ground below moving. He stopped to look back only to pale in horror.
For some reason the whole mountain slope began to slide down, including grass, rocks and the puny trees that grew on the slope here and there. People below also noticed the phenomenon and began to panic, but at first nothing bad happened.
Like many others, Leo instinctively sat down on the ground first tightly holding on to the grass stalks and with wide eyes observed the landslide increasing in speed. On one hand it seemed like a harmless ride – they were sliding towards the valley between the mountains that actually was the meadow their camps and the teleportation platform were at. On the other hand, even if everyone got down safely, what would happen after this huge landmass filled the basin? Would they be even able to teleport away? And would it still be possible for anyone to teleport to this place?
The chaotic thoughts everyone was having were interrupted when couple of breaths later the whole thing started to brake apart. The grassy top on the lower part of the slide suddenly began to rupture and a heartbeat later turned into a chaotically mingling mass of grass, dirt, rocks and people.
The screams of panic of the disciples caught in the muddy disaster died down in an instant and where replaced with even louder ones of those who were still alive and tried to run up the ever fracturing ground.
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Leo theoretically was at the safest spot, but he certainly didn’t feel so. Seeing one youth after another disappearing in the rolling masses of mud and rocks made his hair stand on end. Few moments later he realized he was actually the only one left and the hundred square foot small piece of grass could break any moment with him joining the rest of the disciples.
For a split moment his attention was diverted when far below the first rocks hit their campsite and he could swear that after one of the tents was torn he saw naked Brandon kneeling behind Barbra just the way apes used to hump each other.
Feeling bitter inside Leo jumped on his feet and screamed, “It’s all your fault, you damned motherf*cker!”
But the next moment he felt his feet sink knee deep into the ground – the last piece of grassy soil fractured at rapid pace, but Leo was not going to give up. He forcefully pulled his legs out and ran up the landslide ignoring the dirt getting in his eyes, ears and nose. Already for some time he was choking on the mud that got in his mouth from all the screaming, but compared to the wish to live it didn’t matter at all.
The moment Leo felt the last bits of strength leaving him, he fell face down still unwilling to accept his fate, but then suddenly realized that the landmass he lied on had suddenly stopped moving. The whole ordeal started out of nowhere and ended as abruptly lasting only six, maybe seven breaths.
Leo was dazed, his ears were ringing and vision swam. He tried to get up, but then began to violently cough and dropped on all four.
‘It’s finally over!’ Leo thought while getting up again and already began to consider how to get back to the sect when he felt his footing becoming loose.
The next moment he realized it was anything but over. The landslide carried him to the very edge of the meadow where previously the small brook transformed into a thin waterfall and even moving around casually caused him to slip and fall over.
This time Leo turned out to be lucky again. The huge landslide earlier not only washed over the campsite, it carried huge masses of mud and stone right down to the bottom of the cliff transforming the vertical three hundred feet tall wall into a steep, muddy slope. Now rolling all the way down Leo had no clue if he was still conscious or if this was just another nightmare, or whether he had any extremities broken.
He tried to grab anything that he bumped on and at some point even succeeded, but then the thing also got loose and Leo rolled down again but this time holding tight to something like a branch. It didn’t take long for him to reach the bottom and when with a loud splash he hit the water, he passed out.
Regaining consciousness was nothing new and during his years Leo had almost mastered the skill. After blacking out for a short time the first thing he did was to began to cough violently again, but immediately choked on the seawater that increased his anguish.
Fortunately he was still tightly holding on to that branch he caught and that allowed him to stay afloat all this time. Obviously, it was not because of the branch itself, but thanks to the tree it was connected to.
When he was done coughing, Leo began to look around and realized that the mountain slope was already a couple hundred yards away. The rip current was slowly carrying him into the ocean and he had to act fast if he wanted to be able to paddle back to the shore.
But just as he prepared to let the branch go, Leo felt something large and soft touching his thigh. His scalp went numb in an instant and he jumped out the water in panic landing on the tree trunk. He clearly remembered Barbra telling them that the only ranked beasts in this mortal world were aquatic and he had no wish to get acquainted with any of them personally.
After getting on the log Leo observed the water with weary eyes and after few moments something large, maybe five feet long began to surface. He stared at the object in disbelief for a short while – it was hard to not recognize the poor girl he sparred with last night. Samantha was bruised all over and her eyes were wide open as in disbelief or her premature death. She was lacking one of the arms and from the stump blood continued to slowly seep in the bright blue water.
Leo didn’t manage to sigh in relief or pity, because right after she surfaced a school of palm sized fish arrived from who knows where and in a hart beat cleaned every piece of Samantha’s flesh from her bones. When her skeleton sank, fishes disappeared as well and all that was left was a dark puddle of blood.
‘Damn you, Brandon!’ Leo gulped in fear.
He felt that one wrong movement could easily cost his life and it was all because of one guy! Rule number one was golden after all except the next time he had to find a way to kill the jinx as soon as possible thus saving himself trouble as well as lives of people around him.
Leo positioned himself more stably on the log at the same time trying to shrink to a size of a peanut, but the last part was obviously a fool’s dream. When he somewhat regained his senses and looked around, he noticed multiple similar puddles of blood nearby and quickly realized that the rest of corpses belonging to his fellow disciples were also neatly eaten clean.
Obviously there was no way he would’ve tried to swim to the shore now and even a thought of putting a hand or leg in the water to paddle made his hair stand on end. In despair he watched how the rip current continued to carry him further and further away without hope to ever get back to this place ever again.
He didn’t dare to break off the couple of branches the log had and paddle with those. First of all, because there was a risk to fall in the water and second – they kind of seemed to keep the log stable. It didn’t spin, although it was slippery, and branches made it easier to on to it.
Purely out of habit Leo took off his backpack and sipped from the water bottle. He had once experienced the paradox of being in the middle of huge mass of water while feeling thirst and wasn’t looking forward to relive that again. This time he didn’t have ship’s storage full of Firewater, but a single bottle that would last him no more than a couple of days if he was frugal.
Just as he was about to become depressed, Leo remembered seeing from above multiple distant islands being scattered around the big mountain they were initially at. It turned out there was a hope after all! If not to escape from this mortal world, then at least to get to a dry land!