Chapter 61 - Departure Day

Having chosen the two techniques to be learned from the library, Hei and Lian returned to the spider web house to continue their training.

In the last two weeks left to them, the two youths went back and forth from the spiderweb house and the inner sect daily.

First, they would spend the morning in the training ground for understanding the weapon intent, increasing more and more the time they spent there. After that, Hei and Lian would use a training ground reserved just for their two to exercise themselves with the Vibrating Fist and Demon Concealment techniques and hone their melee combat skills by sparring between each other. By lunchtime, instead, we would return to the spiderweb house to have lunch together, and in the afternoon, they would train on their individual style.

At the end of the training period, Hei was still far from mastering all the new techniques - of the six moves, the only ones that could be used in battle were Chameleon Tongue and Beast Claw. With Snake Fang, he still had some problems in understanding the right timing to strike without risking to expose himself. In contrast, with the remaining three, Snake Hair, Spider Carapace, and Spider Bite, he had started to understand the basics, but it wasn’t yet to the point of being able to be used correctly in training, not to mention during a real fight.

At the same time, however, he had learned Vibrating Fist given the technique had some similarities with Spider Lance, and Demon Concealment thanks to his previous hunting training. But what was more important, was that he and Lian started to finally perceive something from the special training for the weapon intent. He hadn’t yet managed to catch it entirely, but the mere fact that they had begun to perceive it weakly was a sign that, with an assiduous practice, they would manage to make it.

Unfortunately, the time at their disposal was over, and now it's time to leave. But first, Hei and Lian had one last thing to do.

The day before the designated departure, their two prepared themselves to use the Explosive Blood Pills received as a reward from the sect leader. They had powerful effects, but with Bao Bei regulating their flow of spirit power, they would be able to make it. Besides, it was because of their intensity, that they had waited until the last moment. They needed, in fact, to consolidate their foundations as much as possible.

When they ate the pills, Hei and Lian immediately felt their blood boil inside their bodies as they activated their spirit power to regulate the effects of the pills. Despite their efforts, however, as expected from the name of the pill, their blood was circulating wildly in all their blood vessels as the heart was rapidly beating, pumping more blood and creating more chaos. Even their flow of spirit power was affected and risked going berserk.

Fortunately, Bao Bei was there with them, and placing one of her eight legs on each of the two youths, slowly made her spirit power flow towards them, trying to contain the violent effects of the pills.

This process went on for hours and lasted until the afternoon. When they finished absorbing the pills completely, Hei and Lian were exhausted, much more than they did in their workouts. Their breathing was out of breath, and they had to breathe large mouthfuls of air to slowly resume their normal breathing as well as lie down on the ground without strength.

Bao Bei let them rest in peace while preparing an outdoor bath with the latest supplies of medicinal herbs delivered by the sect leader. Since they had to leave, they might as well use the latest stocks to get them back to full strength as quickly as possible.

Thus, the residents of the spider's house spent the last evening before the trip, finally enjoying a well-deserved rest waiting for the departure of the next day.

*

The next day at dawn, Hei woke up. Although he was still a little sore and fatigued, the long sleep and bath of medicinal herbs had their effect. As he was awake, he began to revise the preparations for the departure.

"The sect leader said that we aren’t so far from the capital. With the pace of buffaloes, even without rushing, in a week, we should arrive without problems. As for supplies, there are no problems for Lian and me, as well as Xing, Ye, and mom. The problem is the buffaloes and the bees. Even if there is food to eat in the surroundings, it is worthwhile to load some provisions for them."

Hei, therefore, began to cut the surrounding grass, placing it in large silk bags. He also did the same with the vegetables grown in the field. Not knowing when they would return, he would simply feed them to the buffaloes.

Then he went into the greenhouse and examined the various flowers inside. There was still some time left for most flowers to blossom, especially the poisonous flowers. But among those non-poisonous, some had already flourished. So he gave them water using already filled buckets and left the greenhouse.

Although they were absent, there would still be the queen bee with her hive. He had already given them instructions on how to manage the flowers in the greenhouse, and for the poisonous ones, as long as they limit themselves to giving them some water from time to time, it would be all right. To facilitate their task, he left multiple small water containers, transportable by a group of bees, so that they could perform this task.

Finally, he collected all the spirit honey containers he had in a bag. Since the bees could eat the honey produced by them, it would bring that instead of having to transplant flowers into various vases and take them with them. If he found some fruit, he could feed that to the bees, since they liked sweet things.

With the preparations completed, Hei finally went on to wake up the buffaloes that were still sleeping. Since new companions had arrived, he had given them this entire month as a rest by making them accustomed to one another. It didn't take long for the new arrivals to join the pack, considering that Shui was in charge. However, out of respect for Bao Bei, they still didn’t dare to perform any reproductive behavior.

Shui welcomed Hei with a quiet bellow and then went on to guide the buffaloes for the morning meal and fulfill their needs before lunch. Hei, so he took the opportunity to go and wake up Mi.

The little spirit bee, as he approached, flung herself towards him to then rest on his head. She was already awake for a long time and couldn't wait to leave. It was quite normal, though, considering that the young bees had shorter sleep rhythms than the older bees.

When Mi flung herself out of the hive, she created a big commotion inside, so much to wake up the queen bee that turned out to be quite annoyed. But she pretended not to notice and abruptly greeted Mi and the squadron of bees assigned to her.

Meanwhile, in the spiderweb house, Lian, Ye, and Xing had woken up while Bao Bei had started making breakfast for everyone. After a hearty meal, they could then march towards the inner sect.

*

The place of the appointment was none other than the sect leader residence. Enormous, beautiful carriages had been placed there. All the carriages were decorated with floral motives of different flowers ranging from light to dark colors. On both sides, all of them had the sect crest.

All the elders and their personal disciples had already gathered at the sect leader residence. Obviously, among the elders, only the sect leader, the first and the second elder would come. Although it was the celebration of the King of the Forest Kingdom, it didn’t mean that they could leave the sect unattended. And since, despite their strength, the third, fourth, and fifth elders were more specialized in productive skills, the sixth and seventh elders were also left as protection.

Of the personal disciples, only those belonging to the younger generation would come, meaning the five geniuses of the younger generation that had been beaten by Hei and Lian. As for the other younger generation inner members, as it was a celebratory gathering of close guests, it made no sense to bring them as they had no qualifications to participate.

If they hadn’t won their seats within the top 7 of the younger generation, Hei and Lian couldn’t have attended the ceremony. At most, the sect leader would have taken them to keep her words about the auction, but without then letting them enter the royal palace.

After all, although it was the king's birthday celebration, the prestige of the kingdom sects was also at stake. And as one of the five big sects on the Rainbow Island, the Flower Sect couldn’t disfigure, considering there was another one of the five big sects - the Tree Sect.

Unlike the Flower Sect, which occupied the last place among the five big sects, the Tree Sect occupied the third position instead. Therefore, they had greater power than the Flower Sect, and during the celebration, they would certainly take advantage of the opportunity to show their superiority.

It was for this reason that the sect leader had ordered Hei to reach the fourth stage as soon as possible. They couldn’t lose face in front of their longtime rivals.

After a while of waiting, various figures were seen approaching on the horizon. A herd of 19 buffaloes was coming neatly in a row in pairs towards the residence of the sect leader. In the front, a large albino buffalo was carrying two youths.

In a short time, they arrived at their destination, and Hei and Lian came down from Shui's back.

When the sect leader saw Hei, she couldn't help but be surprised. The boy's outward appearance had changed a lot - his hair had grown so much, reaching about half of his back and taking on an even more intense and shiny black color. But it was his fingernails that attracted the attention as they were green, and when he opened his teeth, the sect leader could see that even those had changed color to blue.

"Good morning, sect leader, sect elders, fellow inner members. Sorry if we made you wait." Hei said, bowing his head and apologizing for the short delay.

Looking at the boy who had changed so much in such a short time, the sect leader had a moment of perplexity before answering.

"Don’t worry. We were still defining the final details of the trip. So you're not late at all. "

The other elders were also surprised at this change and prepared to examine his body. To their astonishment, they discovered that Hei had already advanced to the fourth stage. But it wasn’t a simple beginner fourth-stage, but was already a low fourth-stage, tending to the middle fourth stage.

Except for the sect leader, the other elders weren’t at all aware that he was already at the peak of the third stage last month. They also didn’t know that he had received a third level spirit stone from the sect leader. They knew about the Explosive Blood Pills, though, but they didn't think Hei could absorbed it when he wasn’t yet in the fourth stage.

Surprised, they immediately shifted their gaze to Lian, who was behind Hei absently and was playing with Ye and Xing. Incredibly, even the young girl, always near Hei’s side, had reached the same stage of cultivation.

The elders' personal disciples, except Ying Yue, all had ugly faces. They didn’t expect Hei and Lian to be able to close the gap between them again, not after they had moved on to the fifth stage. If things had continued like this, they would reach the sixth stage at the same time, and there would be no more cultivation gaps.

Sensing the tense mood in the air due to the unexpected surprise, the sect leader went on to explain the journey.

“The people that would go to the capital will be myself, the first and second elder, and the first seven inner members of the younger generation. I will share the carriage in the front row with Mei, so will the first and second elder with their respective disciples in the two carriages behind mine. In the other three, there will be Cao Su, Ying Yue, Lian, and Hei. You can choose yourselves how to settle down. Hei, even if it's your spirit beast, I'd ask you to assign the albino buffalo to my carriage. As the main carriage, it is appropriate to have it assigned to mine."

"There are no problems, sect leader. I will do as you requested." Hei replied as he began to fix the harnesses on the buffaloes. He assigned Shui and three other buffaloes to the carriage of the sect leader; to the other carriages, he instead appointed three buffaloes each. He and Lian settled on the last one, while Ying Yue and Cao Si, respectively, were in front of them.

Then, some inner members of the supply division moved on to load the gifts to be brought to the king, as well as the various items to be auctioned and supplies for the journey. Of course, the most precious things were contained in the elders’ space rings, but since they could only contain a few things, they had to load the rest into the carriages.

However, with the strength of three elders of one of the five big sects, it would only be a suicide to attempt to assault such a convoy, no matter how intriguing the objects inside were.

Once that process was over, it was finally time to leave. Giving the last orders to the buffaloes on how to behave in case of contingencies, Hei gave the signal to Shui to start moving. As leader of the buffaloes, it would pave the way for its companions who would follow from behind.

Meanwhile, Mi and her bee squadron had entered Hei's carriage, settling into a corner, entertaining Ye and Xing, who had become tired of waiting. Sitting next to them was Lian, who seemed calm even though it was the first time they had left the sect since they first arrived.

Hei also sat next to her and put a hand through his hair to take his mother.

‘What’s wrong? Are you okay?’ Bao Bei asked with concern.

"No, I'm fine. It's just that I'm fond of our spiderweb house. It makes me a little sad to leave it."

Bao Bei, understanding his mood, hastened to console him.

‘We're not leaving forever. Once this celebration is over, we can go back to our home. So don't worry and rest.’

Hei still had the bitter memories of when they had to leave their home in the Multicolour Leaf Forest. From that day, they traveled continuously without a permanent home. But after settling in the Flower Sect, he had unconsciously developed a bit of fear in losing his home again.

Although they could always reconstruct it, the memories of a place couldn’t be remade. However, as Beo Bei said, this was a temporary farewell. Besides, there were still bees to guard it. Therefore, Hei recovered from his depressed mood and closed his eyes to rest a little while traveling.