Whistling***
In the morning wind, Lin Xun's figure was as vigorous and agile as a swallow, quickly flittering away into the distance.
In just a month, Lin Xun's emaciated body became much taller, thin yet dignified. He felt he was blessed with vigorous and ever-lasting physical strength. His young and fine face was no longer pale, with an unrestrained sentiment of purity.
All of these had a lot to do with his assiduous practicing. In addition, he ate spirit refining liquid, the flesh and blood of the snow-spot leopard and one-horned lizard every day. With that, he remoulded himself thoroughly and became a new man.
When a man got to the third grade of Martial Realm, he could fly as steadily as he walked for two hours without fatiguing feelings. That was the so-called “go like a horse and jump like a tiger”, which could be accomplished by anyone who reached the level of Viscera Opening.
The distance which used to take more than an hour now just took a quarter of an hour.
Ancient mountains like a vast sea reappeared in Lin Xun’s view. He took off the bone-made longbow on his back and an arrow from the bag, then disappeared in the dark forest with a quick leap.
…
Bang!
A moment later, an arrow flew like a flash of lightning and shot fiercely in the striped tiger, causing it to collapse on the ground meters away with blood splashing. The beast died after a few screams.
Meanwhile, a figure jumped from a distant tree and rushed to the dead striped tiger. With thin and imposing appearance, his gaze like a flash of lightning, he carried a huge bone-longbow in the hand. It was Lin Xun.
The longbow had the backbone of the snow-spot leopard as its arch and a long sinew from the one-horned lizard its bowstring. After days of polishing and tanning, this bow got such strong force that it couldn’t be pulled with strength less than a hundred pounds.
Lin Xun invested bulk of time and energy to make the bow. For instance, the bowstring had been refined with the powder of Feiyun Fire Copper and several spiritual materials for seven days. It was so strong that an ordinary sword could never cut it off, and special arrows were required to match with it.
The black arrows in Lin Xun’s bag, 0.3-meter-long each approximately, were made with the one-horned lizard’s bones. Not only were they sharp, they were also tougher than the finest steel, weighing half a pound each.
In Lin Xun’s early childhood, Master Lu knew that he was weak and unable to fight for a long time. So he told Lin Xun that ordinary weapons might not be suitable for him; yet he could choose bows and arrows as his weapon.
Bows and arrows required their users to gather all strength of the whole body and could kill with just one blow. For the weak who were incapable of enduring fight, they were undoubtedly the best choice.
Since then, Lin Xun had been practicing using arrows, and he fell in love with the force of archery that could kill with a single strike.
Though he had become quite a different person now, Lin Xun had no plan to leave the bows and arrows behind. Sometimes, they could more easily kill his opponents for occasions such as a surprise attack or a distant attack, and even worked better to protect him. If the situation went wrong, he could just turn around and leave without being caught by the opponents.
In short, Lin Xun’s means of fighting was simple but more comprehensive and complementary to his weak point. But Lin realized that it would be better if he had practiced escape skills. Master Lu never taught him that since he seemed not to be good at it either.
Puff!
Lin Xun raised his hand and pulled out the arrow from the striped tiger’s body. He covered the corpse with prepared smell-blocking grass to conceal the smell of blood.
Then he tied the tiger's body with a thin and resilient "ghost-scaring" vine and hid it in a nearby grassy field, taking it as a trophy.
The striped tiger could be counted as a fierce beast, more ferocious than the snow-spot leopard, but now no longer a threat to Lin Xun. Leaving a mark nearby, Lin Xun didn’t hesitate to walk into the depths of the forest.
But soon, the earth trembled, and the mountains swayed in the distant forest. Lin Xun flew quickly to a nearby tree and prepared to shoot.
At the first sound of it, Lin Xun knew something big was running towards him!
The shadow of a huge triangle bull came into vision as expected, marching with a deep rumbling sound. Trees were all knocked down along the way.
Lin Xun became nervous, as this bull could kill a man in the fifth grade of Martial Realm. Without equal in strength seemingly, the beast was bloodthirsty. Tigers and leopards would run away when it approached. However, Lin Xun found something unusual. The triangle bull was fleeing obviously, as if it was frightened.
Lin eventually decided not to fight with it, as the beast still posed a great threat to him at this moment, and he wouldn’t risk his life unless he had to.
Fortunately, the bull only cared about escaping, failing to heed the hidden man in the dense tree, and disappeared in no time.
Lin was about to set forth, but then a sense of inexplicable horror popped up suddenly. Meanwhile, beasts roared from all sides of the forest.
It seemed as if the ferocious beasts hidden in the forest were now all alarmed by something and roared with panic.
Rumbling…
The earth began to shake dramatically with ancient trees trembling, branches and leaves rattling.
Overlooking from the sky, you would see numerous beasts fleeing crazily like floods. Trees along the road were knocked down and crushed into pieces.
What happened?
At this moment, Lin Xun also realized something was wrong. He gave up hunting and took back his bow and arrows. Climbing to the top of the tree-crown in a flash, he saw a battle taking place in the far distance.
It was a black bear over 30 meters high, huge like a hill, yelling to the sky with thunder-like sounds. A slap of it with almost invincible power would crash a row of ancient trees into pieces.
Its eyes were like a pair of lanterns. Its fur was glowing with black light. Its evil spirit rushed high into the sky. Lin Xun felt a sense of suffocation even though he looked from afar.
According to the Documentary of Spiritual Creatures, the beast was billed as the king of mountains with strength mighty enough to crash mountains and tear up spiritual practitioners at the Spirit Gang Realm alive.
The beast's opponent was a tall and strong figure with a piercing golden shadow whose face could not be seen clearly because of the long distance.
What shocked Lin Xun was that the tall figure didn’t show any fear upon the bear's violent attack and even rambled freely in the air. With only a pair of fists, he forced the wild bear to lower its head and roar repeatedly in wrath.
The figure could fly in the air, and even subdue a wild bear that was capable to tear a strong practitioner at the realm of Gang Spirit.
So he must be a strong practitioner at the realm of Sea Spirit!
Only at that realm was one able to fly freely in the sky.
Realizing that, Lin Xun was astonished. How could a practitioner at the realm of Sea Spirit suddenly emerge out of such badlands within these thousands of mountains?
Boom!
Before Lin Xun figured it out, with an awful rumbling, the old tree where he stood was knocked down, making him stagger and topple down towards the ground.
Thanks to his swift response, Lin Xun twisted his body in the air like a sparrow hawk, tapped on the branch with his tiptoe, then landed on the ground safely.
“Eh?”
Just then, Lin Xun found a little girl at the age of six or seven dashing towards him. She wore hide skirt with a pair of bare feet as white as lotus roots, and her hair danced in the wind due to her fast running, showing up a beautiful and picturesque face. Seeing Lin Xun standing a few steps away, she stopped with surprise and then anxiously babbled something as if to tell him to run away.
Lin Xun also knew that the situation was dangerous. He nodded and was about to express his gratitude, the girl, however, grabbed the lapel of his clothes and flew away.
A young girl, five or six years old at most, whose height didn’t even reach to Lin Xun’s chest, now lifted Lin Xun easily as if carrying a chicken, leaving Lin Xun astonished.
What surprised him most was that he was caught right away without any chance to dodge.
Whistling sounds flitting beside his ears, Lin Xun felt relieved when he realized the girl meant no harm.
Soon a mixed feeling came out. Now he was in the third level of Martial Realm, but the little girl could still gallop easily carrying him. Clearly her cultivation was much higher than his.
Boom!
Soon, Lin Xun had no time to ponder; he saw the trees collapsing one after another, and all beasts fleeing frantically.
Under such a circumstance, he had to get out of this place for survival.
The girl took Lin Xun away from the forest and arrived at a safe place soon. Lin Xun couldn’t help but ask, “Little girl, please…” but his voices stopped abruptly.
Because at that moment, a streak of golden light suddenly pierced the sky from afar.
Boom!
Meanwhile, a horrifying boxing wind with spiritual power swooped down from the sky, tore up the emptiness and smashed ferociously towards the little girl.
The girl immediately ducked aside with Lin Xun as if she had foreseen it. Unexpectedly, the boxing wind was so strong that it smashed a big hole in the ground.
Its dreadful effect was expanding, however, causing the young and weak girl to stagger and fall to the ground with Lin Xun.
How horrible!
Lin Xun's pupils shrank with fright, but before he could respond, another punching with a dazzling golden light broke through the air and ran directly towards them.
One fist after another, no one could escape even if Lin Xun got to the Gang Spirit Realm, not to mention that he was just at the third level of Martial Realm. It was so devastating and attacked so abruptly that it was impossible to defend against!
At the very moment of life and death, Lin Xun heard a clangorous voice, “How dare a Voodoo-barbarian act so presumptuously on the domain of Ziyao Empire?”
Every word sounded so thunderous as if to shake off the world.
Feeling nothing but dizzy, Lin Xun and the little girl were rolled up by unrivaled force, narrowly escaping from that terrible punching and landing on an opening area dozens of meters away.
At this point, Lin Xun could see things clearly. Under the blue sky, a man, in a jade robe with hair in a bun and sleeves dancing lightly in the wind, was standing on a long blue sword with pine patterns in the air.
The ethereal figure remained aloof from the world like an immortal descending to the earth.