51 Chapter 51. Travelling south of the kingdom

A week passed since they left the Decan clan, the group had quickly made their way to the middle-south section of the kingdom, getting closer and closer to the village.

At the peak of a tall faraway evergreen mountain isolated from any interference of civilization, a small handsome young boy was sitting down in a meditative pose with his legs crossed and arms resting on his legs, eyes closed as countless invisible spirals of energy slowly flowed around him before being absorbed into his body.

As he laid there quietly for a few minutes, a sudden crack sounded and a barrage of energy was released from his body. Immediately a large smile appeared on the boy's face as he started jumping from joy.

"Finally!" the boy exclaimed, "I have made it to peak gathering. Haha, brother and big sis Aurie will be proud! Let me try an art."

The boy immediately took out his sword from his waist and began running his energy through the sword as it slowly became ethereal and began to light up with countless sparkles.

"David's aksi," the boy spoke as he felt the energy reach a peak and he turned towards a long line of trees and charged forward, leaving only an afterimage of his body.

Boom!

A loud boom sounded, creating a large gust of wind that ravaged the area like a small tornado. Countless splinters and pieces of wood were sent flying in all directions as the boy appeared again at his original position.

Curious, he turned around to look at how the art had improved from his recent breakthrough.

He saw that a long trench of dirt had formed in a straight line and all the trees that had initially stood there were all uprooted and were scattered across the mountain slopes.

Crash!

A large section of a tree fell from the sky and onto the deformed dirt.

A casual expression appeared on the boy's face as he walked up to the trench.

"This is only so so. Ugh, catching up to brother and big sister Aurie will be so hard," he said with slight annoyance.

"Hmm… Brother said that he was going to go train in the cave on the other mountain and Aurie said she would be busy searching for herbs. I should probably not disturb them right now. Hmmm… I'm a bit thirsty, I'll just go to the river and get a drink for now…" the boy spoke to himself as he got out of the scene and began slowly walking down the mountain towards the riverbank.

Swish!

Swosh!

Step! Step! Step!

A quiet rustling of leaves sounded from deep in the forest followed by a succession of footsteps dashing across the dried dead crunchy leaves.

Pant! Pant! A series of lengthy panicked breaths could be heard as a small girl ran out from the trail of bushes in the horizon, on her face was an extremely scared look as she turned back countless times as if she was running from something.

"Where are you hiding, village girl?" a man appeared on the place that she had been a few seconds later, he was holding a sword in his hand as he quietly walking on the forest floor, not making much noise like a predator stalking for his prey.

Seeing that he did not get a reaction, the man began to evilly laugh, "Hahahaha! You are lucky to have my master have his eyes set his eyes on you. Why don't you return with me? That way no one will get hurt and we will both get rewarded even. I know you are hiding behind the tree on the left."

Realizing that her hiding spot had been compromised, the girl shuddered in fear as she tried to dash away again. "I'll never come with you!" the girl screamed, "you guys only know how to kill."

"Haha, got you!" the man quickly caught up to the girl and managed to grab the girl's hair with his large hand, completely immobilizing her. He made sure that this time that his target would not get away again as the girl screamed in pain as she was lifelessly dragged along back into the forest by the man who was pulling her by her hair.

"You won't take me back!" the girl shouted angrily as she suddenly reached and took a silver dagger that was hanging on the man's belt and she instantly swung at the man's hand.

Swoosh!

An empty sensation, her knife swing was met with nothing. The man had taken his hand off her hair just in time and retreated a couple of steps back.

A mocking expression appeared on his face as he glared at her with his black pupils and mocked, "You stupid girl! You haven't even started cultivation, you think you have the ability to even harm me?"

Seeing that what the man was undeniable true, the girl's heart turned heavy and she immediately fell on her knees as a tear of frustration dripped from her eyes.

Why was the world this harsh to her? She had never done anything deserving of this so far in her life.

With no more cards to play, she took out the knife and held it out in front of her as tears began to flow from her eyes but she stood firm and coldly said, "I can't harm you. But I will make sure that never go back to that stupid spoilt guy!"

The man began to sense a heavy negative feeling and began to panic. He cautiously asked, "what are you trying to do?"

But instead of replying, the girl did not reply and suddenly pointed the knife towards her and stabbed herself in the abdomen as the blade went straight into her tiny frail body.

"Nooo!" the man screamed as he dashed forward trying to stop her. But he was too far from her to get there on time. The knife had been so firmly thrust and it had been so coincidentally placed that it had stabbed her stomach and liver.

"You stupid useless thing! How dare you do this! I was about to get rewarded!" the man flipped with anger as he started wildly slapping the girl to vent his anger.

He knew that the girl would now die, she had stabbed herself and inflicted a very serious wound onto her self. And there were no doctors nearby in the vicinity so there was almost no hope to bring her back so he decided to take his anger out on her.

"You chose this path for yourself. Your life would not have been so bad if you had just submitted to him," the man regretfully spoke as he knelt to the body.

"I'll be taking this," the man said as he pulled out the dagger, causing the girl to weakly scream in pain, and walked off.

A small puddle of blood began forming around her as the girl said there lifelessly, blood constantly flowing out from her wound at a steady rate. Her face was completely purple from the countless slaps that she received from the man.

But currently, that was the least of her worries. All the slaps had caused her brain to be numb from the pain. Instead, she was tormented by her thoughts as fear of death attacked her.

Countless shiny translucent tears dripped from her eyes as she cried, "Mommy…. Daddy… Help… me… I… don't want to… g...go."

A burst of light-headedness filled her as her eyes slowly closed and her consciousness slowly crept into the darkness. At this exact time, if she had her eyes open then she would see a silhouette coming towards her.

The boy was calmly walking towards the river bank as he whistled with a bright mood. However, as he was walking through the forest, his attention was caught when he was a long trail of footsteps leading towards the riverbank.

Intrigued and curious, the boy followed the trail. He had been here for two days and he had not seen anyone or seen any trail of human life so this had quite puzzled him.

Sniff sniff

As he followed the past, there seemed to be a particularly strong indescribable scent that slowly got stronger and stronger as he got closer and closer.

Sweep

As he brushed past the last two bushes, he found that he was standing in front of a young girl who looked slightly younger than him. She was lying on the ground lifelessly with blood slowly oozing out of her belly. Her poor quite primitive clothes were stained in rich-red blood, her hair was turned red from it soaking under the blood pool. Her face was swollen and purple as if she had been harshly beaten on her face and it was very hard to picture her real face.

"Oh my!" the boy cried out alarmed. He immediately walked to the girl and quickly checked on her, " Hey! Hey! Hello? Are you alive?"

The girl did not reply and just laid there not moving a muscle, Lex suddenly got worried and he got down and placed a finger on the side of her neck.

Lub dub...

Feeling an incredibly weak pulse, all his overbearing worries were lessened as he let out a sigh of relief.

He moved her body around slowly to check on her status. And found out that the place where all the blood was coming from seemed to be a stab wound.

"I need to get her out of here and give her immediate medical attention. She won't survive long if I keep her like this. Her pulse is extremely weak," he decided.

He immediately picked her up and ran to the river at full speed. Once he arrived, he washed her face and body that was blood-stained.

Her state was worse than ever, her face and her whole body began to turn pale due to the amount of blood she had lost. Now that he could see the wound clearly, he saw how serious and dangerous this was.

He instantly took a bandage and wrapped her waist with it to stop the bleeding and placed his hand over the wound as he inserted a wisp of healing energy. After doing this for a whole three minutes, her status slowly began to stabilize.

"Now for her face," he spoke as he got up began to search for herbs, not wasting any time. And he began grinding them together into two separate pastes.

He applied one of them all over her swollen face and all purple areas of her body and bandaged it. And the other paste was applied to her wound over the bandage.

"Phew!" the boy spoke out as he wiped a layer of sweat from his forehead as he fell back in relief.

"Your situation is now stable. You should be waking up in a few hours. Thank god that sister Aurie taught me some of her medical skills. Sigh… I should go and get some food for her, her body looks like she hasn't eaten in a long time. Brother and sister should still be busy right now. I'll just stay here and wait for now," Lex said to himself as he sat next to the girl and took a nap under the shade next to the river bank.