The Winds of Change

Soaring high above the treetops, Li Wei once again regained her breath. She had been going nonstop against the beasts for as long as she could remember. Having been given the Qi Fans, she had quickly learned of the ability to fly on one of them. She then used the other one to throw at a panther. With Vortex Thrust, she was able to combine both abilities to make herself go faster, yet while in the forest, it was difficult to maneuver.

If she did use both abilities, the drain on her Qi would only allow her to stay airborne for a period of ten minutes. Without using her movement ability, she was able to stay in the air for almost an hour.

While she had her escape route down just in case she needed it, she also had an attack strategy that would make most eyes go wide. She had taken her defeat at the hands of Huang Yi seriously. She knew that she was wrong by not having her guard up during the tournament.

Li Wuhan had drilled the Qi Shield ability into her before they had set out for the Jade Forest. She knew hers wasn't a match for her brother's and could only take one or two hits from the panthers before she began taking damage, yet those two attacks meant everything.

Having caught her breath, Li Wei glided back down to the treetops, allowing her fan to disperse as soon as she hit a branch. Two smaller fans took the place of the larger as she activated both Vortex Thrust and her Qi Shield. A faint glow appeared around her as the shield activated, and small gusts of wind appeared below her heals, propelling her down the tree and into the sights of one panther.

As she zoomed past the beast, she stuck out her fan, slicing into the panther and leaving a cut the size of a paper cut. She could see the faint glow of red on her fan as it drank the red liquid. Jumping onto the trunk of a tree, she propelled herself back to her opponent, and then back again and again. Li Wei gained speed with every kick to every trunk. With her Qi blocking uniform, the panther could only follow a streak of white as the fan dug into it.

She didn't stop with the sides of the panther, but also ducked underneath, cutting up the belly of the beast, or jumping over and slicing the top. The blur of motion did nothing but confuse the beast as it lashed out randomly. If it could sense her cultivation base, she had no delusion that the fight would be within her favor, yet for now she only focused on each slice.

As the minutes wore on, Li Wei sapped the strength from the panther the same way that multiple mosquitoes might take down a larger animal. With hundreds of blows raining down on the beast, it's movements became sluggish. Li Wei dashed off of a trunk and sliced the beast straight in the eyes, blinding it.

After such a crippling blow, the eight year old girl stopped her barrage of attacks and released her small Qi Fans, replacing them with a much larger one. Sitting on it, she used Vortex Thrust to settle a wind underneath her, raising her once more above the tree line. Taking aim, she brought the fan from underneath her in both hands and dropped like a gunshot to the floor, using her momentum to decapitate the beast.

Having perfected her own attack style, she sighed in content. Carving out the beast core with one of her fans, she also cut off a leg from the beast, leaving the rest for the other beasts of the forest.

After storing the leg of the beast, Li Wei used Vortex Thrust to propel up to a high branch and sat down to cultivate. She took out a Qi Grasping Pill and a beast core, eating both. She then lost herself in cultivation as the Qi began to storm above and within her. She could feel some of the qi within the beast soak into her own cultivation. She had noticed some time ago that this would happen if she were to kill a beast with the fans, yet Hong Zhao never told her that such a thing was possible with the ability. Maybe he didn't know?

Though Hong Zhao had amazing luck with his backer, she suspected that he knew next to nothing about both the world they lived in or the abilities they have been given. If he did know, he wouldn't be so quick to give them out. Yet she didn't think of him as some petty child.

As the Qi condensed above her head, Li Wei let all of her musings pass her by. There was a time for such thoughts, and time to increase in rank.

Having condensed the Qi as much as she could, she allowed the pure energy to funnel into her. She could feel it rapidly turning within her dantian. Her Qi spiral seemed to be bulging to the point of breaking, yet still it continued to grow within her. "Just a little more," she thought as she got back up.

Stretching, Li Wei noticed how dark it had become within the forest. "I must have cultivated through the entire day." She thought to herself while jumping from tree to tree. A smile formed on the young girl's lips as she jumped from tree to tree. "I won't be looked down upon." Her competitiveness shown through the young girl as she looked to the forest floor, picking out another panther and diving down from the heavens like an avenging angel.