Chapter 5: Tiger Queen

The moment the gargantuan and elegant tiger stood up I could feel an aura of such unfathomable power pressure me. The tiger’s eyes seemed so intelligent and profound. It was as if it could see right through me. It seemed to have very human like emotions as it seemed to raise its eyebrow when it looked at me. I couldn’t move at all under the pressure the look from the tiger.

Suddenly I heard a female voice in my head “I do not wish to hurt you human child, but I am being chased, and I cannot afford to have you running around having seen me.”

I was shocked. Only the most powerful of beasts were capable of communicating with humans. Before I could respond however, my sight turned black.

When I woke up I couldn’t see anything. My face felt strangely numb. I reached to touch my face and tried to rub my eyes only to find out that there were no eyes to rub. I felt again, only to be met with the numbing feeling of empty eye sockets. I started to panic ‘What is going on!? Where are my eyes? Did that tiger take my eyes?’ It seemed like the only logical reason for my eyes having disappeared. She was afraid that I had seen her, and thus took my eyes.

If I wasn’t nearly emotionless, it would have been impossible for me to think this rationally about the situation. Unfortunately I realised that she not only took my eyes, but it seemed she took my very perception of the world visually. I couldn’t remember what colour looked like which. The world I remembered just seemed like smudges of physical objects. I started to feel the ground around me and realised that I was still in the valley.

I felt the ground and felt indents in the ground, after feeling around a bit more I realised that these were her footsteps. I tried to follow the footsteps, but I kept bumping into objects. After 2 more hours of trying to track the tiger I decided I needed a new method. Over the last 2 hours I had only walked a couple hundred metres, and I wasn’t really making much progress.

I sat down and started to cultivate, I decided that if I had nothing to do then I might as well try to become stronger so I could fight the tiger. I then realised something, when I was emitting and absorbing qi I could feel the world around me. I could recognise where things were and how they were shaped. It wasn’t even remotely close to sight, but it worked for walking around. It also made my other senses more powerful.

I decided to try and track the footprints again. This time it was much easier. I could clearly acknowledge the footprints in front of me and after just 1 hour I had already travelled several times further than the last time.

I didn’t know whether it was night or day, but I wasn’t particularly worried either. Since I was releasing my qi all the beasts would naturally avoid me, as my qi was stronger than theirs. Eventually I appeared in front of a cave, I found the cave to be massive, and stretching to an astonishing 40 meters tall and it seemed to be almost endless in length. I walked inside and immediately recognised the massive aura of the tiger. Due to my intense focus I could see that there were also smaller auras. Three of them to be exact and they were incredibly similar to the large tiger’s aura.

An evil smile appeared across my face as I suddenly realised the situation. ‘The reason she didn’t want anyone to find her was due to her children. I can imagine that powerful cultivators would probably want a tiger cub, so that’s why she was running, and wouldn’t let me see her.’

Unfortunately she had made a grave mistake, she left me alive. I knew I couldn’t contend with her, but her children should be simple enough. To repay her for what she did to me I shall take the eyes of one of her children. I laughed at my plan. She was in a weak state right now, so she had to sleep a lot. I had learned to control my qi even better now so I should be able to hide my presence in front of her. I couldn’t last time, because I was too entranced by her beauty.

I hid my qi; unfortunately this made me almost completely blind again. I inched forward for an hour, before finally reaching her. I unsheathed my sword, making as little noise as possible as I tried to find one of the cubs.

I noticed that the cubs were lying with their mother. This made it a little more difficult to continue with my plan, as she would notice me if I started to touch her. I then thought of a new tactic. I could bribe one of the cubs out of the cave. An hour later I had prepared everything, I had created an incredibly powerful aroma of meat just outside the cave.

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I waited for hours, but nothing seemed to happen. Just when I was about to give up felt movement. A little aura was approaching the exit of the cave. I quickly jumped onto the tiger cub. I precisely cut out an eye mid jump and one beautiful blue eye fell on the ground. The cub immediately started to scream, I could already feel the aura of the large tiger waking up. Getting slightly nervous I quickly increased the speed of my procedure, cleanly cutting out the other eye.

I quickly picked up the eyes and ran out of there. Hiding my aura I ran blindly through the forest. I felt my spine shiver as I heard the angry roars of the tiger and the screeches of the cub. I heard the terrifying and heavy footsteps of the tiger.

I realised that there was no way I was getting away without sight, so as a last resort I stuck the tiger eyes in my sockets and focused on healing my vision. The chances of this working were very little, but it was either I would die or I could attempt something crazy.

The moment I put the tiger eyes in I felt a pain in my head. It was excruciatingly painful; it was similar to having ten thousand migraines at the same time. I felt the inside of my head changing slightly. For some reason it seemed to even affect my ears, as I couldn’t hear for a while.

Around a minute later I opened my eyes and saw a whole new world. The beautiful blue eyes saw the world so differently. I could see the qi behind everything. I could see the very essence of the world. ‘Is this how tigers see the world?’ I thought. It felt that my hearing had also increased as I could hear the tiger roars much more clearly, and it was if it was saying something. I realised there was meaning behind the roars of the tiger.

I listened intently and heard “I AM THE TIGER QUEEN! EVERY BEAST MUST OBEY ME! EVERYONE ATTACK THE HUMAN CHILD!”

‘Tiger queen?’ I thought. It seemed I had stolen the eyes of a very special cub. However I did not have time to dwell on these thoughts. The tiger queen appeared to have assembled a small army of all the strongest beasts in the area. I decided it would be good if I would leave as quickly as I could.

I barely managed to escape from the area and I ran for two days and two nights in fear that the tiger queen would follow me. Eventually I deemed it safe to stop and rest for a few days. I still had two skill books which I had to learn from. I immediately decided that I would learn the Air Step Martial Movement Technique. After having experienced a chase from many beasts I thought that it would be a good idea to train in a movement technique.

I stopped in a fairly mountainous region. There were many clouds everywhere and it seemed like a hard place to find anyone or anything. This was good, because I didn’t want to be found by anyone. I found a nice mountain which had a flat mountaintop. I immediately started to meditate and was shocked by how much the tiger eyes had helped me. I could quite literally see the world in a different light. My qi control had definitely improved due to this. I could ‘see’ a fly with qi even when I was a hundred meters away.

After I had taken in the beautiful new world I decided to start reading and comprehending the Air Step Martial Movement Technique. As I read it I became increasingly more excited. The concept behind the technique was that you could bend the wind to your advantage when moving. According to the book you can increase your normal movement by 2 or 3 times its current speed and your fastest speed can be increased to almost 10 times as quick. The best part of the technique was that the faster you went the better the technique would become, meaning that it will always have a use even when you are at a much higher level with a much higher base speed.

I was really excited by the prospects of this. Since I was at a high altitude in the mountains there would be even better results. This was because of the high amount of wind around there. I would also be improving my physical body. This would naturally happen, due to the higher altitude it was slightly harder to breathe, causing even standard workouts to become much more tiring and cause greater increase in strength.

That evening I started my practicing of the air step movement technique. I estimated that this time it would take me several months minimum to master the technique.

Thus began my longest training session yet.