Farewell (4)

The next day, Long Ming woke up early, took a shower and walked to a secluded spot to train.

After a few minutes' walk, he left the city and reached a secluded corner of the forest nearby. He then picked up his twinblade and began to perform a few blows that he intended to turn into techniques.

His training sessions were brief, as he didn't want to tire himself out too much when he was so far from his destination. So, after about ten to fifteen minutes, he stopped exercising and headed back to the city.

The road was quiet and calm, but when he was approaching the town, he stopped abruptly and looked at a particular point in the forest.

"Hm?" he frowned when he heard a loud noise coming from there, as well as several desperate cries. Without a second thought, he ran in that direction, each step taking him several meters further.

Long Ming's running was efficient and fast, allowing him to run several kilometers in a few minutes without getting tired. It was almost like a movement technique, but it lacked some refinement before it could be called that.

Then, in a minute and a few seconds, he was able to take a closer look at a devastated village, with its wooden walls destroyed and houses demolished, as well as the cries of despair from its inhabitants, and a roar coming from the perpetuator of this destruction.

"A monster?" Long Ming frowned as he saw, in the distance, the silhouette of what appeared to be a bear, only much larger than any normal bear, fiercely attacking the villagers, not allowing them to escape.

'I hope I'm not too late,' with these thoughts he ran even faster towards the village, reaching its interior in just a few seconds.

At that moment, the bear was about to attack a hunter, but Long Ming, wielding his twinblade, slashed at its back.

"Roaarr!" the bear roared in rage and turned around to strike Long Ming in the chest. Its claws were huge and looked like swords, but Long Ming wasn't intimidated and dodged, then advanced into the creature's blind spot and made another attack.

Long Ming's attack cut deep into the creature's shoulder, almost reaching its bones. This angered the bear even more, which roared again and raised its two paws, then threw itself towards Long Ming.

At this point, Long Ming coldly analyzed the size and reach of his enemy.

It was a huge bear, which seemed to be almost seven meters in size and four meters in wingspan. Observing the angle of the bear's claws, he noticed a gap in its attack and advanced towards this gap.

Long Ming nimbly avoided the bear's claws and counterattacked simultaneously, slashing both its paws.

Immediately after slashing the creature's paws, Long Ming propelled himself towards a blind spot in the creature's vision, and reached its left side.

The bear roared again and turned towards where Long Ming had gone, but at that very moment, Long Ming leapt towards its head, propelling himself with his Qi (more precisely, strengthening specific muscles in his leg) to easily reach the bear's almost seven-meter height, then made a diagonal cut towards its head.

His twinblade passed through the bear's face with surprising ease, bypassing its skull defenses and shattering its brain.

Soon afterwards, the creature's enormous body began to fall backwards, without any sign of life. And in the next moment, Long Ming landed on top of its body, looking closely at his target, making sure there was no sign of life in the bear.

Seconds later, he breathed a sigh of relief and turned to the hunter who was watching him with obvious shock from a distance.

"Are you all right?" Long Ming asked. The hunter still looked shocked and could only shake his head in agreement.

"All right, then go check if there are any survivors trapped in the rubble," Long Ming ordered as he surveyed his surroundings. In the distance, it was possible to see several destroyed houses, as well as some lifeless bodies on the ground.

Long Ming was depressed by this sight, but he suppressed his feelings and also began to search the rubble for survivors.

About half an hour later, Long Ming had searched all the houses and saved as many people as possible.

Of the entire village, which had enough houses for around fifty people to live in, thirteen people remained. Of these thirteen people, four were in serious condition, another five had lost a limb or had injuries that made them unable to live normally, and the rest had some minor injuries.

Most of the survivors were women, the elderly and children, as the men, especially the hunters from the village, tried to draw the bear's attention away.

Observing these people, Long Ming approached a child, who seemed to be in the best condition of them all, and said: "Hey, kid. Go into town and ask Mr. Chi for help, tell him that the village has been attacked by a monster and that the villagers need help. Also, if he becomes anxious and hesitant to help, reveal that a mysterious traveler has already killed the monster and allowed him to take the spoils."

The boy nodded hastily in agreement and tried to run into town. Seeing the boy leave, Long Ming turned his gaze to the other survivors and, noticing that they didn't need his help, left the village.

"Benefactor, where are you planning to go?" one of them said nervously.

"... I'll be right back, there's no need to worry," Long Ming said without bothering to explain his thoughts, then started running in a specific direction.

'That monster was injured...' it turned out that Long Ming realized that the bear showed signs of a previous fight, including several wounds around its fur, and deep holes.

Of course, it was possible that these wounds had been caused by the hunters trying to tackle the bear, but Long Ming thought this extremely unlikely, as the bear's fur seemed too tough for an ordinary hunter to cut through.

Therefore, Long Ming suspected that the reason the monster was injured was because it had already faced something else. Most likely, a monster.

With these thoughts in mind, Long Ming observed the tracks on the ground left by the bear as it walked towards its old territory.

This didn't prove to be a difficult task, especially as the bear had left quite explicit trails along the way, either from its huge footprints or from the periodic blood stains.

After a few minutes, Long Ming found himself facing the entrance to a cave.

'This is it...', he thought with conviction. Long Ming felt that this place was the bear's old territory, as well as the territory of another monster.

'Ahh...', thinking about all this, he let out a long sigh and entered the cave.

It was a dark place, but dry and warm. In the distance, he noticed a small source of light, as if it were a flame, so he took a firm hold of his twinblade and stealthily walked over to it, his senses extremely focused.

'A flower?!' Long Ming quickly approached that source of light, to the point where he could discern its shape and, to his utter amazement, it was a flower.

"How can a flower shine?" Long Ming couldn't ponder this mystery for long, because the next moment he heard the sound of footsteps coming from another corner of the cave.

"Roarr!" Just then a roar sounded and Long Ming noticed something running rapidly towards him. He hurriedly jumped to the side, just in time to avoid a monster running towards him.

The monster ran a few more meters before turning and facing Long Ming. The two stared at each other for a brief moment, and Long Ming could see that this monster looked like a tiger, but for some reason it had bright stripes and its claws glowed a reddish color.

'Two stars!' Before Long Ming could express his surprise, that tiger ran towards him again. It was extremely fast and Long Ming could only jump to the side to avoid the tiger's blow.

The tiger quickly turned around and attacked Long Ming again, and Long Ming continued traveling back and forth, narrowly avoiding the tiger's attacks.

Whenever Long Ming avoided an attack, he noticed four cracks in the ground, and smoke coming out of these cracks, as if something hot had made them.

As Long Ming avoided the tiger's blows, his senses became sharper and sharper and his movements more refined, as if he had entered a kind of trance, until he noticed a gap in the tiger's attacks and, just after avoiding a blow from the monster, slashed its side with the twinblade, making a long cut across the tiger's side.

"Roarr!" the tiger roared again, looking even angrier and glaring fiercely at Long Ming, but then the tiger was surprised to lose sight of Long Ming. In the next instant, the tiger hastily turned around, just in time to notice a blade flying towards it.

The tiger narrowly avoided the deadly blow, but a cut appeared near its neck.

Long Ming seemed to disappear from sight again, but the tiger was already more prepared and turned in time to avoid a cut and swung its claws.

Long Ming hurriedly took a step to the side and turned his body at an angle to avoid the claws' reach, but he still felt a warmth run through his body, causing him to sweat slightly.

After dodging, Long Ming took another step forward and reached the tiger's back, then mobilized his Qi and made a slash towards its tail.

The tiger roared in pain as it felt its tail being completely severed, then turned again and advanced towards Long Ming. This time, it was even faster, and marks of charred earth appeared on the ground where it had previously been.

In less than a tenth of a second, Long Ming hurriedly raised his twinblade, just in time to try and fend off the two claws that flew towards his body.

"Urgh," Long Ming felt a sharp pain in his arms as he tried to parry this blow, and then his eyes widened as he saw his blade crack and instantly shatter into several pieces.

The claws continued to travel towards him, so he jumped away and pulled an iron sword from his spatial ring.

The tiger stared at him menacingly and then leapt towards him again, this time Long Ming managed to react and turned his body at an angle to avoid the claws, then aimed his sword at the tiger's neck and sent it into its jugular.

Long Ming felt his sword melting as it entered the tiger's neck, as well as the smell of burning iron. The tiger roared even more, then raised one of its paws and tried to slap Long Ming.

Noticing this, Long Ming raised his hands and grabbed the sides of the paw, holding it with all his might and unleashed a Qi-powered kick at its head.

The tiger's body arched due to the impact of his kick, Long Ming took advantage of this gap to remove a spear from his spatial ring and thrust it into its belly.

Soon after, Long Ming took the rest of his twinblade and thrust it into its neck as well.

Only then did the tiger seem to have finally died.

"Tsk, what a loss," he muttered in dissatisfaction as he looked at his broken twinblade.

But unfortunately, it was only a weapon of a higher mortal grade, so it would be useless against stronger enemies. In his fight against Fei Lu, he had already noticed that it had taken some damage, so the loss of this weapon would happen anyway.

He therefore decided to ignore this matter and turned his attention to the mysterious flower.

It was a bright red flower, its petals looked like little flickering flames, and Long Ming felt a strong concentration of Qi in each of these petals.

"No way...", he muttered in shock as he recognized what this flower was.

"A spiritual flower!" he then said in complete happiness. Long Ming then began to laugh with happiness, as he hadn't expected such a pleasant surprise.

As far as he knew, spiritual flowers were true treasures of nature that any family of cultivators would start a war to get their hands on.

This was no coincidence, as spirit flowers contained a concentration of Qi, and a highly pure Qi at that, in their petals. What's more, they could be used to create top quality pills and ink for runes.

"But how can I use it?" Unfortunately, Long Ming didn't know how to use this flower. He didn't have the slightest knowledge of alchemy to turn it into a pill, let alone the resources to turn it into rune ink.

Of course, it was also possible to eat these petals to refine his Qi, but Long Ming didn't know how to do that and without a cultivation method, refining Qi could be more harmful than beneficial.

"Hmm, maybe I can study the Qi contained in these petals. Maybe that will help me create my method," Long Ming thought that this should be the best way to take advantage of this spiritual flower, so that's exactly what he did.

Long Ming then went into resonance, allowing himself to see that there was a strong concentration of red Qi in these petals. He then began to analyze this Qi, using his senses for a long time.

At some point, Long Ming had lost his state of resonance, but he didn't care and used his refined senses to feel the Qi of the spiritual flower.

After a few hours, he finished his meditation and stood up.

"It's a shame to leave this flower here... But there's nothing I can do," he then lamented, but decided to ignore this and turned to the corpse of that tiger. Long Ming then removed all the valuable parts of the monster, its skin, claws, teeth and some bones, then returned to his inn.