The Heavenly Wandering Sword

Chapter 12

“He dare raise a hand against the Eldars. Whoever cuts him down will get the chance to cultivate in the Golden Temple’s inner sanctum!” Cai Wu called out before sneering at Li Jian. “You have some qualifications, but can you take on the whole sect?” Dozens of Golden Temple Disciples all rushed towards him, their spiritual force and killing intent strong enough to leak out throughout the Beast Glade. “A masked coward who dares not show his own face thinks he can speak to the Golden Temple on equal footing? Leave not a trace of him behind!”

Li Jian only looked at them casually. With his mask on, he would be able to do as he wished. Smiling underneath his mask, he placed his hand on his sword handle and drew it with a tiny amount of spiritual force. In front of him, dozens of disciples fell down, cut apart to pieces from the single sword draw. Their bodies hit the ground, the speed of the draw sealing even their veins, not a single drop of blood oozing out from between the dissected pieces of their bodies. The Elders all got up and roared with anger. “You dare raise your hand towards us? You will see what the real power of the Spiritual Realm is.” All four Elders summoned their battle auras, the Sect Master himself leading the attack. A massive golden beam of light launched towards him, as well as a golden dragon and a golden tiger, each containing enough power to level a city. For Li Jian, this was akin to being pricked with a needle.

As his opponents attack came towards him, Li Jian simply held out his sword to them. “None of you are my opponents.” The attack struck the point of his sword and simply broke apart, dissipating in a flurry of spiritual force. Even the King Snake reared back, hissing at him in discomfort. “First, you the King Snake.” Li Jian lept forward, his sword pointed right at the Snake’s head. The King snake hissed and opened it’s mouth with it’s multitude of fangs exposed. “Void Sword Art: Kill.” The force from his blade struck forward towards the snake, killing the snake in one strike from a hundred feet away. The snake fell to the ground, the impact of it’s body landing back on the ground causing the ground to shake. The only tell tale sign of death was a single hole the size of a fist that had gone through the snake’s brain entirely.

Landing on the ground, Li Jian looked at the Sect Master and the four Eldars. “None of you are my opponents. None of you are worthy of standing in front of me.” Cai Wu shuddered as he watched the way the King Snake died. “Who are you? What was that martial art you just used?” Li Jian stabbed his sword onto the ground in front of him and laughed. “Martial art? What you call martial arts are only diluted portions of the original Dao arts.” The Sect Master and the four Eldars looked at each other. “Sect Master, please escape. The Sect must live on through you. Us Eldars will hold this monster back.”

Li Jian looked at the four Eldars and shook his head. “Sect Master, I will let you live. I want you to live, and understand the gap that exists between us.” With a single gesture, the Sect Master was forced down on his knees, his body unable to move. The Four Eldars quickly attacked again but before they could even move, spikes of dark energy erupted from the ground underneath them. Their feet were spiked through, leaving them unable to step off the ground as the tentacles of dark energy grabbed onto their feet and bound them to the earth.

“This is the Void Sword Art. You have never seen it in your life because your levels of cultivation would render you deaf and mute from trying to read the manual of this. Sect Master, this will forever be the site of your Golden Temple’s downfall because you provoked someone you could not afford to.” With a single gesture, Li Jian laid down a massive array that covered up the entire battle area. Each Golden Temple corpse was pierced by a spike that came up from the ground. Cai Wu was beside himself, falling down on the ground and unable to fathom what was happening in front of him. Li Jian looked at the four Eldars.

“I would have spared you all, but the act of binding a magical beast soul to a weapon is too cruel. It goes against the Will of the Heavens.” Before they can protest, he gestured with one finger and all four of them were killed, their bodies falling into chunks of inert meat onto the ground. “Go back to your Sect and understand just how wide the sky is.” With that, he flicked his fingers towards Cai Wu, freeing him of the spiritual force that bound him to the ground. The Sect Master wasted no time, running for his life down the mountain.

“Tiger King, how are your injuries?” He turned his head towards the white tiger that was laying down near the entrance of his cave. The tiger bowed his head and growled softly. Holding up his palms as a gesture of peace, he walked up to the injured tiger and placed a hand on his side. “The poison is quite serious, the venom is deadly. I can save you.” The tiger nodded its head. “Kon Kon.” His Sword Spirit appeared. “I will begin the refinement process Master.” The Sword Spirit cut out the beast core of the King Snake and then began to refine the entire body of the snake down. After a few moments, the massive body of the snake became a pool of golden fluid. Kon Wang floated the pool of golden essence in front of Li Jian who activated his own spiritual force. Using Dao force, he compressed the snake’s golden essence into a solid gold pill before taking the pill and feeding it to the tiger. The tiger chewed on it slowly, it’s movements weak from the venom in it’s body.

Placing a hand on the tiger’s side, Li Jian imbued the tiger with a small amount of his Dao energy, it’s effect multiplying the power of the pill as the tiger was suddenly filled with power. Its wounds closed rapidly, the tiger coughing a few times as the venom was expelled from its body. After a few moments, the tiger stood up and shook itself. “King Tiger, you will still need to heal for a few days. If you eat plenty of magical beasts, then you will recover your power. Right now, you are still at the Spiritual Realm. The cultivation loss can only be recovered slowly.” The Tiger bowed its head towards Li Jian, and then gestured towards its lair. Li Jian would follow it curiously as the tiger led the way. When they entered through the cave, he saw that once they got deeper, there were spiritual crystals adorning the inside of the cave. Inside was a statue made up of entirely black onyx stone. The only thing that stood out was a very small red orb that was implanted on it. Li Jian read over the words carved onto the black onyx slowly.

“In the lair of the beast lays the Heavenly Tiger King. A tiger from the heavens, sent to the mortal plain to seek out a master worthy of its mantle.” The Tiger closed its eyes and transmitted a simple message to Li Jian, who understand instantly. He drew his sword back a few inches and cut his thumb on the edge before holding his thumb over the red orb. A few drops of his blood later, the red orb glowed and flew out to imprint itself into the head of the Tiger. The Master and Familiar bond was established between the two of them in their minds. For Li Jian, the contract in bright red letters was quickly imprinted in his Inner Dao Space, the Tiger quickly understanding that his new master was no ordinary cultivator. “White Tiger King. I will call you Xiao Hu.”

The Tiger bowed in understanding. “Xiao Hu, you need to heal yourself. Stay here, and let me know when you are healed. Go out and hunt, you can rely on me for spiritual energy as well.” The Tiger nodded in understanding, sensing that it’s previous draw on the spiritual force of the world could only be called drips from a leaking sink compared to now when it is the tap fully opened. “Xiao Hu, I’ll head out first.” The tiger bowed at his new master as Li Jian headed out back into the Beast Glade.

He tossed the King Snake beast core in his hands a few times. It had a rather hefty weight to it, as expected of a King level beast. He looked around at the mass grave that he had essentially created with his sword formation and shook his head. He had lost his temper again, but he also knew that it was a necessary lesson for the Golden Temple sect to learn. “Master you really have a bad temper.” Kon Kon appeared beside him, floating over the bodies and sniffling at them. Li Jian sighed and shook his head. “Enough, let’s go back down to the Forest. These idiots ruined my trip.” He hmphed to himself as he began walking down the mountain steps, back down into the forest. He found in the Beast Glade a rather peaceful stream. “Kon Kon, what do you want to eat?” His Sword spirit appeared beside him and looked around. “Meat buns.” Kon Wang got out of the stream after being smacked into it by his Master, and laughed. “All you have caught are those damn blue feathered ducks. How about a goose instead?”

Li Jian looked around and could not see any goose floating above and sighed. He started a fire anyways by the riverbank and looked into the waters. It had already been a few interesting months spent in the mortal world. Perhaps the assassin guild will be more interesting. Hearing a loud squack, he looked up to see Kon Wang smacking a blue feathered duck in the head, killing it instantly before bringing it down. “I guess I would have to settle for duck again.” Li Jian sighed as he got to work plucking the feathers off of the bird. “You know Kon Kon, in the city, ducks like these are worth five hundred spirit stones each.” The Sword Spirit added more sticks to the fire before making a face. “Why is that Master?” Li Jian raised an eyebrow at him. “Because ordinarily people can’t fly as high as they do and just smack one out of the sky.”