Chapter 12 - Ambush
After he took the lift back up to the testing grounds, Li Kang retraced his steps and once again found himself on the stone platform behind the waterfall. Having deciphered the Lo Chang clan's calligraphic code, he turned on his ki sight and searched the platform for more symbols. There, on the right hand side of the platform! A singular symbol sat under a layer of dank moss. Li Kang pressed down on the symbol with his foot, careful not to slip. The platform rumbled and a staircase began extending out of the side of the cliff face. This would have been how the ancient Lo Chang clan had accessed this testing ground in the past.
He carefully made his way down the staircase, burdened with his heavy load of stolen treasures. While he was itching to infiltrate the Suhn Clan, he knew that the pragmatic move would be to secure the treasures first, back in his hideout at the healing pool. He also wanted a chance to take stock of what he had obtained. With this in mind, he began the trek back to the healing pool cave, keeping a low profile as he was still in Suhn Clan territory. His disguise would stand up to a cursory inspection from a distance, but he wasn't sure how well it would hold up if he were confronted face to face.
Soon, he was well on his way back to his hideout without incident. When he was about halfway back Li Kang thought to himself, I'm surprised that I didn't get ambushed by foes and lose all this gold I just got for free. With the purchasing power this gold affords me, realistically I won't even have to fight the Suhn Clan at all. In fact, since these gold coins are potentially thousands of years old, if I hire armed protection and take these to a major city, I could sell them individually at an auction house at a rate far higher than the gold itself is worth. After that, I would be set for life. With more wealth than the entire Li Clan put together, I can afford to pay the best team of spirit hunters to get a compatible martial spirit for me, bond it, and pay the greatest alchemists in the world to formulate pills and elixirs that can boost my cultivation to the highest heights. Once I can't progress any further using money, I can simply use my grade one heavenly treasures to drain the ki energy out of more powerful martial cultivators and improve my strength that way.
Suddenly, a blast of pure ki energy interrupted Li Kang's train of thought, ripping his rucksack off of his back. Ah yes, the enemies I was just thinking about, he thought. The rucksack landed off in the bushes to the left, all of its contents intact for now. Li Kang dropped to the ground and rolled the opposite direction. While his opponent may have gotten the jump on him, he wouldn't be aware that Li Kang had the yin yang daggers securely on his belt.
Not good, Li Kang thought. Judging by the blast of pure ki aura, my opponent is no low level goon. He knew that to have access to offensive ki abilities, the martial wielder would be at least in the first stage of martial spirit bonding - the meridian crystallization stage. While Li Kang was extraordinarily strong for a bone tempering stage one cultivator, he couldn't hope to defeat a martial wielder at a stage that far above his own. That meant that he had to minimize his losses and make it out of the encounter alive. Losing either of the daggers or Master Guansho's book would be just as bad as dying to Li Kang as it would badly stunt his upwards cultivation trajectory. I have to protect these three artifacts with my life! He thought.
Drawing the dagger of avarice, he stayed low in a knife fighter's crouch and scanned his surroundings for his opponent. He found him hiding behind a tree to his left.