Pathway To Eternity

He looked around in amazement.

The flowers were radiant and beautiful swaying with the wind. Oh the wind, that nice breeze against his face with the wonderful smell of roses met his nose. He heard the faint sound of chirping above and saw birds soar across the sky. The warm gentle sun shone on him, filling his body with warmth but he took no notion of it for the beauty was to great.

Lost in the sad enjoyment of the scenery, he nearly collided with the three sect Savants, the enlightened ones. They were the school safekeepers roaming the internal premises of the school, constantly checking for the safety of the sect and security discrepancies.

"You! Stop right there."

Realizing they were addressing him, he quickly glanced at where he came from but there was no door there. Then, he knew he was in some sort of troubles and his mind rang. "Senior Hypatios."

"Why are you sneaking around in a restricted area?"

"And, why are you not in your school attire?"

"You are one of the outer disciples, aren"t you? Oh, i see. Are you trying to hide from partic.i.p.ating in the compet.i.tion?"

"Or, do you think these Ten Cloud spirit fruits will help you? Foolish boy you are."

"Please forgive me seniors, i didn"t mean to enter this place intentionally. It was by accident." Haider pleaded with them."

"Accident? Accident your head. As it is with the rules of the Flying Stars sect, sneaking around in the restricted area, trying to steal some Ten Cloud spirit fruits, trying to dodge the upcoming compet.i.tion."

"You will be cutting fifty bamboo trees that must be arranged in rolls of ten each."

"One week of solitary solitude, to think of your actions and ask for forgiveness."

"And, one week of sweeping the school premises. Now follow us."

They led him to the outer hall of the sect which was pretty big with many sect stewards busy preparing and arranging the outer disciples for the compet.i.tion that would be starting on the same morning and handed him over to one of the sect stewards. The learned ones. Some of them were graduates of the sect while some were inducted into the sect based on their quality strength and skills.

"Find him a robe, then take him to the bamboo forest and make sure he cut fifty bamboo stems. We will be checking later."

The steward acknowledged the Savants and waited for them to depart before turning to Haider. He looked him with eyes being given to a serial trouble maker. He had been having a relatively hard day already, now he had to stay in the bamboo forest supervising an idiot trouble maker.

"Follow me. And, for heavens tears, no talking and no stupid sound making."

Haider really wanted to ask some questions but he had just been told to maintain his peace, so he cautiously sighed and followed him.

The place they came to wasn"t just a bamboo forest but a bamboo planet. Covering hundreds of acres of land, the bamboo forest was densely populated with big bamboo trees. It spreaded in all directions like an ocean of bamboo trees, it really deserved to be a world on its own.

They navigated the forest for a time before they came to an area where there was a recent bamboo cutting activity. They surely had a pattern of cutting the bamboo trees.

"We are here now, you can start cutting from the right side and if you finish on time maybe you can partic.i.p.ate in the compet.i.tion and i can get to watch. So please, hurry up."

There was no other option for him than to cut the bamboo trees. The steward was at the early stage of evanesce core, hence, he didn"t fancied his chances of escaping, so he wouldn"t risk it. Particularly when he wasn"t sure if the door would open for him even if he managed to reach it. It would only bring more punishments anyways, more dire punishments.

He took his mind of it and concentrated on the task at hand. The bamboo trees. He looked at the bamboo trees again. How in heaven"s tears, would they call these things bamboo trees?

The bamboo trees were no simple or ordinary bamboo trees, they were extremely thick and strong like timber. These were no bamboo trees, these should be called oak trees. For a Juchi or a Lianchi cultivator, it would have been seriously challenging. But, he was a Zhuji cultivator of the early stage, he should be able to breeze through the bamboo with ease despite all these obstacles.

Or so he thought.

It would be the first time he would actually use his Chi energy to accomplish a task, thus, he pumped enoungh Chi into his body. With complete focus, he raised the axe and it fell on the bamboo tree with a clean swing. But to his surprise, the moment the axe touched the bamboo tree, it sent back a reflective shock that spread through his body making him sprawled on the floor.

After recovering back from the little shock, he carefully and thoughtfully looked at the bamboo trees. These were serious foes that deserved proper attention. He started to a.n.a.lyse what could be wrong in his mind without allowing the steward to know that he had no idea of everything going on.

Did he tried to cut a bit too high? It must be, he would try to cut low next.

He swung the axe low hoping it would be fine the next time around but, he recieved the same shock that made him staggered a few steps back.

"What is wrong with this boy? Is he sick in the head or trying to properly waste my time?" He looked on in bewilderment before

"Hey you! Why are you behaving this way? I still have a lot to do, get on with it and stop wasting my time. I warn you."

"Senior, i a.s.sure you, i"m really trying to cut the bamboo trees. But, they are too strong."

"How can you be using your Chi to cut the Ten Triagram spirit bamboo trees?. If you are really trying, you will use your natural strength and not your stupid Chi. Now, can you carry on so we can leave here on time?"

"I will give it my all senior, you can count on that."

Body strength. Well, he should be able to relate to that, his bones was already strong like that of silver snow bear and his body like that of a mountain.

Knowledge was truly the key to success. Having known how, he landed his stroke on the bamboo stem with greater success. There was no reflective shock or any repercussion. He continued to land his swing on the bamboo and chips started to appear on the bamboo stem after every swing. He continued to swing the axe and after ten minutes, he finished with the bamboo tree then moved to the next one. It took him three hours to finish cutting the twenty bamboo tree and arranged them into rolls of tens..

"Heaven"s tears, thank you for putting my life and maybe yours, into consideration. Maybe you are not that stupid. I believe you can stil partic.i.p.ate in the compet.i.tion afterall. Let"s go."

They returned to the outer hall where sect stewards were dividing the outer disciples into groups. Haider quickly joined the disciples on the instructions of apprentice. There were five groups of twenty disciples each, all together and he was in the fifth group. The were lined up according to their group as they walked towards the sect"s arena. The sect"s grand master, the masters, the a.s.sociate masters, sect stewards and the sect"s disciples were already at the arena when the outer disciples marched in.

The grandmaster raised his magnified voice which filled the whole arena.

"I welcome you all to the annual Bloodgrit compet.i.tion. It is our tradition to welcome new disciples into the inner sect through this compet.i.tion where they would be directly under school masters after being successful. We know it would have been difficult for you to enter this sect directly to become inner disciples due to different reasons, but you have the chance to do that through this compet.i.tion and you must grab it with both hands."

He stopped to look around, there was total silence in the arena as he continued.

"We have a total of twenty masters who are a.s.sisted by their a.s.sociates, masters with great abilities and powers that will surely further your development and advancement in leaps. After successfully completing the compet.i.tion, the masters will choose ten of you to be directly under them, to learn from them. So i tell you, give it your sweat and blood and maybe you can be one of the choosen. We will start with the collection of the magical beasts" cores from the dale of beasts. Let the compet.i.tion begin."

Ah, Charat planet. Heavens tears, how did he get himself involved in all these? This world wasn"t his birth world in the first place, would he turn to beasts" food himself in a foreign world? How ironic would it be, for him to be eaten by a magical turtle. Really ironic. His mother, grandparents, uncle primus and his friends at sect. Heavens tears.

Having no idea where the dale of beasts was, he decided to stay in the middle of the group of disciples. He couldn"t ask any disciple for help or direction since it was every disciple to himself or herself. Pretending to know his way around, he increased his pace to match that of the speeding disciples. He couldn"t even use the swift spine technique not to give much away, the generally known light steps was enough for him to keep up.

Thirty minutes later, they arrived at the dale of beasts. The haven of the magical beasts was a wide area that stretched for miles and sorrounded by mountains and hills. Although, the dale mostly contained less powerful magical beasts, it was not a place to be taken lightly. It was the beasts a cultivator couldn"t detect that were most dangerous. But the good thing was that, the magical beasts were not sentient animals, they could not reason or strategize. They only knew either to attack or to run away.

Since it was a very wide area, the disciples spreaded out looking for magical beasts. Some of them were combing the outside perimeters while some ventured a bit further into the dale. Before long, many disciples have started engaging some beasts in gruelling battles. But one thing he could see was their strength, they were on par and some were even stronger than him.

Are these people eating rocks and metals? They were not even Zhuji yet. How come?

Glancing oca.s.sionaly at them, he too, would try to engage the beasts head on like them, though he would have prefered to have a weapon but he had no weapon. His thought went to the training sword, he should have kept one sword in his spatial sac for times like this. But who would have thought?

He had drifted away to the mountain side looking for something to use when he felt a deep sense of danger coming from the behind. He didn"t need to turn for him to know that it was a really big dangerous animal and was very close behind him. He quickly used the swift spine technique to move forward several yards before swiftly turning around. A second after leaving that spot, a mighty paw of fourteen inches iron claws raked the empty air. Those claws might have cut him into four pieces. He could see the beast clearly now, it was the rare white longdan tiger.

The white longdan tiger was watching with him with keen dead eyes, growling as it inched forward.

Watching the beast drew nearer, Haider started to contemplate. He had never used the shifting hand in a true combat before and definitely had never used his Chi in combat. He quickly came into conclusion to use only the Shifting Heavens hand technique without using Chi. Though, he was stronger, the white longdan tiger"s claws and teeth were the dangerous weapons he would try to avoid.

How powerful were they? He slowly took backward steps watching the white longdan tiger with complete focus. Though, he wasn"t sure about the power of the tiger, he was sure about its speed. It definitely wasn"t faster than him.

The white longdan tiger attacked with very fast speed, Haider who almost had his back to a tree, waited agonisingly until the last moment before he quickly used the swift spine technique to evade the attack. As he was moving past the tiger, he used the tiger"s momentum to twist its right arm under it. With the force of its flight, it collided with the tree, the force impact drove the nail of its claws into its own guts, disemboweling it totally. The longdan tiger tried to move but finally collapsed.

It was a really big longdan tiger. Haider looked at the corpse of the longdan tiger and wondered how he was going to remove the core from the it.

"It looks like you need some help."

"Uhm, h.e.l.lo. Didn"t see you there. I guess i do, a knife or something to remove the core. Didn"t bring mine. Silly me. Name is Haider by the way."

"Genji. Here have it." She said and handed him a long knife.

"I saw your fight with the tiger, your strength is good for an outer disciple but, your speed? No outer disciple can move like that." Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him.

"Don"t thinkn like that, there"s nothing to it, i"m just naturally fast. Thank you for helping me out anyways."

He removed the core, cleaned the knife and returned it to her.

"Hm."

"What about you? Have you gotten one?"

"Yes i have. And, are you not taking the hide and the claws?"

"If you want them, you can take them. I don"t want to burden myself with loads, too lazy for that."

Since you"ve finished, time for me to go then. See you."

She placed the removed hide and claws on her shoulder and disappeared with flash steps.

Tracing his path back, he left the dale of beasts with his acquired core and returned to the flying stars school with few minutes to spare on the original time and delivered his core. The core"s strength was measured and entered it to his name. They did the same to other disciples too, the strength of their cores were registered to their names accordingly.

Afterwards, the sect grandmaster addressed the audience again.

"The first round of the compet.i.tion has finished and the names of all the successful disciples have been recorded. Tomorrow, the successful disciples will move on to the second phase of the compet.i.tion, martial combat. The life of a cultivator is a hard one, you will face foes and opponents, if your martial combat is lacking, you will die. This compet.i.tion is not to primarily show your combat skills but your combat hearts. A heart willing to learn is a heart worth teaching. Prepare for the second round, tomorrow morning we"ll continue. Good day to you all."

What would happen now? He didn"t even know what he was supposed to do now. The Savants wanted him to go on solitary solitude, who knows where?

He would just follow the other outer disciples away from prying eyes.

He followed them to the outer premises of the sect where he saw a sect steward and quickly approached him. Twenty minutes later, he was a.s.signed to a room he would be sharing with three others, Jiang, Fa and Chaun.

He wouldn"t be able to practice any martial or mystical techniques because of his new room mates. He wouldn"t be able to cultivate because of heavenly tribulation that would descend the moment he tried to. He wouldn"t be able to use his spatial sac too and no meat.

With sagged shoulders, he shook his head.

Time to prepare for the following day.