Chapter 71 Black Swamp Forest (Part 2)
"So then. Are you going in on your own?" I asked Du Xiangling.
"You might be powerful, but I have no intention of partnering up with anyone at the moment. I want to get to the center on my own. I just do not want to rely on anyone in my martial way. That is something that I cannot compromise on." Du Xiangling shook his head.
"I am not asking you to partner up with you. Why the hell would I need your help? I already defeated the girl who crushed you in the martial gathering. Do you really think that I would need your help to do anything here? I just wanted to ask you if you knew any path that someone had to follow. You said that if I strayed too far from the center of the path, then I was dead meat. But what exactly is the center of the path? How do you know that you are in the right path. I mean, there must be a reason that this is a trial at all." I asked.
"The reason that this is a trial is that even when the safe path is opened every three years, the magical beasts within are so powerful that only people in the Core Formation Stage can go through calmly. Some beasts are so powerful that they are no longer called Magical Beasts. They are called Spirit Beasts. They have their own spirituality. They are so strong that they are on the level of Xiantian warriors of legend. The Sky Heaven\'s sect has an understanding with the Spirit Beasts, and during this time, they do not mess with us as long as we do not mess with them. With the information that I gave you, you owe me a lot now." Du Xiangling said.
"No kidding. I would have walked straight to my doom if it weren\'t for your help here. What do you want? I can pay in spirit coins." I said.
"I don\'t want any of that. I want another fight. Not now. When I get stronger. In one month, I will show you that you just got lucky the last time." Du Xiangling said as he rushed into the forest.
"On second thoughts, I actually want to follow him. But what is the fun in that? I think that I should see if I can fare any well against the magical beasts in the forest. But why is it called the Black Swamp Forest though? I see a lot of trees, but no swamps. The trees are not even black. I just don\'t get it." I shook my head as I headed into the forest.
--------------------------------------------------
A few hundred meters away,
Du Xiangling was rushing into the forest, when he stopped. He looked back for a second.
"I forgot to tell him the most dangerous part about the forest! But oh well. He must surely know about this. He came all the way to the Black Swamp Forest. Who would come to one of the five forbidden zones of the kingdom without knowing what was the biggest danger of them all. Even the kids know about this."
Thinking this, he turned back and continued on his journey.
-----------------------------------------------------
"Why do I have a bad feeling all of a sudden? It feels like I am missing something." I thought to myself as I sneezed. I was deep into the forest by now. The Sun was beginning to descend from its peak, and I looked ahead.
"Staying here for the night is certainly too dangerous. I should make sure that I know what the biggest dangers are, and I should find some high ground so that I can be safe here." I said to myself as I continued further.
There were cries and sounds of twigs and branches breaking, but all of this seemed to be happening in the distance. Every now and then, I could hear the sudden cry or shriek of someone my age. They probably came across a strong magical beast and met a horrible fate.
"Why the hell am I not seeing anything here though? I cannot see a single moving thing here, except for these rotten flies and bugs. Am I in the wrong forest? Where are the frightening magical beasts?" I wondered.
"I think that you are in trouble, Liu Feng." Liu Man suddenly weighed in.
"And why is that?" I asked.
"Because you are not encountering a single beast in a forest. That is almost impossible. Unless, of course, you are in the territory of a very powerful spirit beast. My memories detail a lot of spirit beasts, and the process of becoming one is not pretty. Beasts also have to cultivate, but our cultivation is by killing and devouring monster cores of the beasts that are killed. And only upon killing hundreds and thousands of beasts will a beast become a spirit beast. They are not going to be benevolent. I do not know what the deal the spirit beasts have with the Sky Heaven\'s sect is, but I do not trust it enough to stay here any longer. You have to go back where you came from." Liu Man said with a tense tone.
"Oh shit. I royally screwed up again. I should have known that something was going wrong. Where did I come from? I was not walking completely straight, but I made sure to not stray that much from the path that we are supposed to take. Where should I run to?" I mumbled as I looked around.
I was so deep in the forest that no matter where I locked my gaze, all I could see were trees. A single path could not present itself.
Grrrrrr
I heard a loud growl near me. There was a beast approaching me, and I had no way of knowing whether it was a spirit beast, or even a magical beast that I could afford to fight.
I turned around to see what was coming towards me.
My eyes widened and I quickly panicked. In front of me was a fifty foot brown grizzly almost a hundred times as heavy I was, overshadowing me, and it certainly did not look happy.
"Oh shit. I have to run!" I dashed forward.
"System Homepage!" I shouted.
Username - Gray Holton
Cultivation name - Liu Feng
Title - Young Master of the Liu Family
Level - 8
Strength - 55
Stamina - 32
Agility - 55
Cultivation - Foundation Establishment - 2nd layer
Luck - 20
Skills - Heaven Devouring (Medium Proficiency)
Blue Dragon Spear (Medium Proficiency)
Iron Body (Medium Proficiency)
Ethereal Weapon Arts (Basic Proficiency0
Alchemy(Basic Proficiency - Foundation Establishment level)
Mind Eye(Active)
Skill points - 5
Stat Points - 5
The system showed me all my stats normally.
"Put everything in speed. Now!" I shouted.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------