Chapter 39 39 – Going On A Mission



With a swift stabbing motion, Annie almost pierced through the disciple's chest, but he deflected it with his club at the last moment, making her sword only graze his shoulder and leave a shallow cut behind.

This graze was enough for her darkness technique to take effect. The darkness made his arm numb, considerably weakening his swings. Using a two-hand weapon like the club with a numb arm wasn't efficient.

However, most of the family members used darkness in their art. He could resist the darkness enough to allow him to use his club, although not as sharply as before.

Annie sent another stab, but he quickly jumped backward to give himself space to swing his club while deflecting her sword.

Annie didn't want to give up her advantage; she chased him into close-range combat. With a few more thrusts and swings, her fighting art managed to cut through his defenses again.

Once Annie managed to lock him in a distance too close for him to use his club efficiently, he was put at a disadvantage.

The shallow cuts accumulated one after another, and his arms were getting too numb to hold the club up.

*Cling*

His club fell to the ground, and Annie's sword appeared on his neck.

"Winner, Annie!"

The judge announced her victory and she assumed the third spot instead of the male disciple.

After recuperating he tried to challenge Rose but lost by a landslide, and he lost his only chance to challenge someone. The other guy used his second challenge to fight Annie but lost, and the competition was over.

"Good job, you were awesome."

Ken smiled at Rose who sat next to him with a satisfied expression.

"Thanks. Think you could defeat me?"

"In a single move."

"You wish."

-------

After the last bracket was over, Ken set out to complete his mission. He had 3 weeks left to finish them, and the travel time was 2 weeks. He ran through the woods as fast as he could without depleting his stamina too fast.

By running, he managed to shorten his trip by 4 days, which left him with around 2 weeks to complete the mission.

He stepped into the village and found all the houses closed and locked as if it was the middle of the night. He knocked on one of the doors but got no answer.

"Hello, I'm from Phoenix Feather Sect. I came here to take care of your request."

He shouted loudly and took out his disciple token. He made it float above him by channeling some Qi into it.

After a few seconds, he heard some doors get unlocked and a few people came out of their houses when they saw his token.

"Young Master, please save us!"

They kneeled in front of him and begged. They were all mortals without any cultivation base, and they couldn't offer any resistance whenever the evil cultivators came to take some of them.

"Don't worry, I will take care of the problem. Tell me what happened."

"Every few nights a group of 5 evil cultivators come to take some of us. They take 10 people every time they visit and whenever someone tries to stop them, they just take him too."

One old man took the role of speaking to him and Ken attributed the job of "Village Chief" to him without caring whether it was true or not.

"I see. No problem, let me take care of it."

"Young Master, did you come here alone?"

"I came alone, why?"

He guessed they felt insecure about having a young child fight the evil cultivators for them, but still asked.

"They have 5 people, it's very dangerous for Young Master to fight alone. Maybe you should call for reinforcements, we would rather die ourselves than let harm come to you."

'This old man is good with words. If I didn't know better, I'd think he really cares about me.'

Ken thought inwardly. He understood the old man's intentions. He was just worried that Ken would die, and the mission will get reposted only when Ken's time limit will be over.

The village chief wanted him to call for reinforcements before he dies, and he could not care less whether Ken died or not.

"Thank you for your concern. I will be enough by myself. Or do you have any complaints?"

Ken let out a burst of pure bloodlust and all of them froze in deep fear when they felt death looming above their head.

"No, no, Young Master. We were just worried for your safety."

The old man stuttered as quickly as he could, and Ken stopped tormenting them.

"Good. I appreciate your concern. When should they come next?"

"They don't have a fixed schedule, but they come every 5-7 days. The last time they were here was 3 days ago, so they should be here soon again. We can take care of your accommodation until they arrive, Young Master."

"Sure. Do they always come at the same hour?"

"They come during midday, that's why all the shops and houses are closed now."

"I see. Then I will be spending the afternoon in the forest nearby and be here at night and midday."

"Yes, Young Master."

He was led to an empty house, and he could guess it probably belonged to a family that the evil cultivators kidnapped. Otherwise, they'd take him to an inn or give him a room somewhere.

'At least I get better accommodation thanks to those evil cultivators.'

He spent the next few days just as he told the old man he would. He slept in the village at night, waited there until the afternoon, and then left to hunt beasts in the forest. After killing a few beasts, he already felt like his understanding of his skills has improved.

Even his mastery was scratching the surface of the Advanced mastery as he kept fighting the beasts.

------

Three days later, on the sixth day since the last visit of the evil cultivators, his targets finally arrived. Just like the villagers described, they were a group of 5 men.

'Maybe evil cultivators don't believe women have equal abilities.'

He wondered to himself but went out to meet with the group.

"Haha, Leader, check it out. This time one kid came out to deliver himself to us."

"I wish they were all that cooperative, it's always a mess when we need to break into their homes and drag them out."

Ken already switched his robes with rural clothes and had only his sword disguised as a belt. He even left his storage ring behind at the house he was given.

Ken just kept walking toward the man who was addressed as "Leader". He couldn't feel their stages, but he figured that the leader was the strongest one.

"This is a fancy belt, I want it, Little Kid."

One of the evil cultivators said when he noticed Ken's belt. Although it was meant to conceal the weapon, it was still of much higher quality than the rest of his clothes. Otherwise, it wouldn't be able to act as a sheath for a fourth-grade sword.

"Yes, Master. Let me remove it."

The leader was already in his strike range. He sent his right hand to his belt and held the hilt.

'Flash Unwind.'

He unsheathed his sword as fast as he could. As he feared, the leader was at the Core Formation Stage and could perceive his attack.

But that was exactly why Ken went through all the bother of disguising himself; his sword moved swiftly and all the evil cultivator could do was to harden his arm with his sword Qi and try to block Ken's sword with his arm.

Ken's sword cut through the man's arm and got stuck in his bone, displaying the power of specialized Qi. However, the sword's specialty wasn't its sharpness, but its elasticity.

The moment the opponent blocked his unsheathing technique, Ken felt enlightened at the usage of a flexible sword. When the sword was blocked, the other half curved and the tip of the sword left a red mark on the man's throat, sending a Qi pulse inside.

The man choked on his blood as he did his best to stop the Qi pulse from destroying his spinal cord, yet he couldn't protect his blood vessels and vocal cords.

Although he survived, he was choking on his blood and on his dying breath.

Ken didn't wait for the rest of the cultivators to react; he quickly executed Slash on the closest enemy.

Despite its mundane name, Slash actually combined three slashes into one. The practical meaning behind it meant that if the enemy could block only one or two attacks, they might find a gaping hole in their chest.

But the man didn't even block the first one, so he died three times over. By that time, the other three already reacted. They drew their sabers and performed their fighting arts against Ken.

Those three were only in the Strengthening Soul Stage; they couldn't do anything against Ken. By retreating with Cloud Running, he dodged their sabers easily.

Since they were aiming to kill him, he wanted to take advantage of the situation to improve his mastery over Cloud Running. He used it to dodge them with minimal movements when he realized he always had to step back or to the side to dodge successfully.

That was when something clicked, and his Cloud Running affected his entire body. His body turned flexible, and hitting it felt like swinging at a feather. His body would move and twist in a way that made their sabers miss by less than a centimeter.