Li Siblings

Having made up his mind, Hong Zhao packed up all of the fur within the cottage he had made, along with the furniture he made from scratch. "Waste not want not." He quoted as he left the cottage and turned to look at his handiwork. "It won't be so difficult for me to do the same thing next time."

He filled several water skins he had made from the shadow panthers and put them in his ring. He didn't know if there was going to be a main source of water where he was going, so it was a good idea to be careful.

Having spent two months within the woods, he had most of it memorized enough to walk through blindfolded. He left at night, knowing that the panthers he was used to dealing with wouldn't bother him. They would be happy just to have him leave. Too long had they been the prey.

Traveling to the edge of what he knew took the whole night. He looked to the unfamiliar landscape in front of him, then turned back to give one last look to the home he had created. He had never been too overly attached to the homes he had set up in the past. They served to shelter him, and no more. But this was the first home he had made since moving to this new world. The small patch of woods was all he knew.

Turning back to the unknown, Hong Zhao made a silent prayer that if someone needed shelter, they would find the home he had set up.

Setting forth, Hong Zhao settled into the familiar sensation of closing off his emotions. He had to do this countless times on countless missions. He put on a mask of indifference and focused only on the task at hand. His senses stretched out in front of him. What he couldn't see, he could hear. Only focusing on the silence would allow all other noises to come to him easily. He could tell that there was no life around him for at least six hundred meters in any direction.

Walking an unfamiliar path always made his senses heightened. He took in every detail as he traversed the land. For a few hours, Hong Zhao familiarized himself with his surroundings. His movements were muffled due to the shadow panther robe and clothing he had made, and the darkness made him blend in. To anything in the area, he was just a shadow passing through. If he was hungry, he would track down a fierce beast in the area by tracking prints around him and kill his target. After cooking the meat and storing the rest of the kill besides the organs and intestines, he would continue to move through the woods.

What had first seemed to be just woods had turned into the obvious realization that it was a forest. As the sun began to rise, Hong Zhao could see the trees continue in every direction. "This is going to take forever." He then had an idea and activated vortex thrust. With small gusts of wind at his heels, he aimed for a tree and began to run, hitting it, he began to run up the tree at an accelerated rate. In seconds he reached the top and took in his surroundings. Far off to the north he saw smoke. "Someone else's camp fire?" The idea of meeting someone else in this world besides Lan propelled him forward. He used the branches of other trees to propel him forward while using vortex thrust.

The smoke became closer with every step he made, which covered at least twenty steps per leap. Soon, he was at the edge of the forest and saw what made the smoke. Below him by a path, he saw two adult men and two children. At first, he thought it might be a family sitting by a fire to eat, but then he noticed the ropes around the children. Since he had a good vantage point, he decided to let things play out for a while. He didn't want to jump to conclusions since this was the first interaction with a new world. He wanted to see what exactly he had been reborn into.

Below him, the men were laughing and eating what looked like stale bread. Both the children looked at them with a look of terror. By their expressions, Hong Zhao could tell they knew what their fate would be.

"What do you think we should do with the brats?" A gruff voice asked through bites of bread. "The girl would fetch a great price as a slave, but the boy? There just isn't a market for boys anymore."

"We can always sell them to the beasts." The other man said. "They always need meat."

The children's eyes both went wide while the men talked.

"It's a shame they haven't started cultivating." One of the men looked at the kids. "If you had, you wouldn't be in this situation!" he bellowed a deep laugh.

Over the past two months, Hong Zhao had begun to sense the qi of the shadow panthers. The ones he had always attacked were always at one or two star student level. Anything higher he would avoid. Looking down at the two men, he could see that they were just ordinary humans, they had no cultivation base at all.

Not comfortable watching this play out any further, Hong Zhao put his hood on and dropped from his tree, activating vortex thrust and devouring qi claws before he hit the ground. Before the man stopped laughing, Hong Zhao swiftly appeared behind him and slit his throat. The two children watched as a shadow seemed to kill the man before them. Before the other man noticed, he swung his other claw around in one fluid motion and decapitated him.

The children looked to Hong Zhao with a mixture of awe and horror. If he chose to, that would be their fate as well. He believed the horror might have come from his attire. His shadow panther suit wasn't supposed to be cute and fluffy.

Hong Zhao pulled his large hood off and smiled. "Are you two injured?"

The two looked dumbfounded when they saw that a five year old was the one that killed their captors. "Hold on a second." Hong Zhao said apologetically while he untied the gags from their mouths. "That should be better."

"Thank you so much!" The young girl cried as the gag was finally untied. "I thought we we-" She trailed off and looked at the ground, apparently deciding if the situation had changed yet or not.

"How did you do that?" The young man asked incredulously as he looked at the two men. Apparently he wasn't as lost in the moment as his sister. "They were incredibly strong. They overpowered me and my sister in mere seconds with their strength, and they weren't even cultivators!"

"It doesn't matter if you are strong when there's a knife to your throat. You die just the same." Hong Zhao activated his devouring qi claws and cut the ropes holding the two children. "Do you have a cultivation method?"

The young boy nodded his head. "We were heading back to our parents from getting our cultivation methods from grandfather. We just haven't started cultivating yet."

"What will you do when you start cultivating, what are your goals?" These were the first people that he had met in this world. He didn't want to waste the chance to learn what their lives were like.

"What else would we do?" The young boy asked in a suspicious tone. "We would get to the fifth star student rank and enlist in the Yuan City academy to help bring honor to our families." He spoke as if everyone in the world should know this. What he didn't know, was that the child in the shadow panther suit was not of his world.

"Okay then." Hong Zhao said in finality. "You two get to the first star student rank now and I'll keep watch." He said it in a way that earned him stupefied looks from the children. "What?"

"It takes months to reach the first star student rank. It's not just something you sit down and achieve." This time it was the girl who spoke.

"Look, you two are on your own. Two men just attacked and captured you. Something tells me that something like this happening is a common occurrence. So I'll look after you while you reach the first star rank. Here," He took the remaining two pills from his ring and handed one to each child. "You can have these. It'll speed things up a little."

The children looked at the jade vials in their hands and uncorked the stoppers. The potent medicinal smell gave them pause. "These are qi grasping pills!" The boy said as he looked at his sister. "High grade ones by the scent. Where did you get them?" He couldn't believe his luck. Something like this never came for free.

"Where isn't important, just take them and cultivate." Hong Zhao took out some of the fierce beast meat that he had packed. "Have you two eaten lately?" He held out a stick of meat to each of them.

Both the children accepted, and before the boy began to eat, he looked at Hong Zhao with admiration. "We are siblings. I am Li Wuhan." He began eating and looked to his sister to continue.

"I am Li Wei," She said with a bow. "Thank you for everything you've done for us, and for what you are doing." She then began to eat with reckless abandon.

"How long has it been since you've eaten?" Hong Zhao was taken aback by how savagely the two were eating. It seemed like they hadn't eaten in days.

"We ran out of meat three days ago, mostly we've been surviving on berries and different herbs we have found on the way." He looked at the two men in disgust. "Those two stole the last of the bread we were saving."

"You won't run out of meat if you travel with me." Hong Zhao said matter of factly. "How far is your village from here?"

"You would walk us all the way back?"

Hong Zhao nodded. "You can tell me what your home is like on the way. How far is it?" He took a stick of meat out of his ring for himself and began to eat.

"The journey will take at least a month." Li Wuhan eyed him skeptically between mouthfuls. "You might get bored on the way."

Hong Zhao only shrugged. "There are plenty of fierce beasts between here and there." he looked gleefully at the siblings. "I doubt I'll get bored." He was starting to feel his age. It had been so long since he was able to let loose the way that he did with the fierce beasts. Something inside of him was awakening. Every fight he got into made his blood boil. Maybe it was all of the blood that seeped into his claws, or maybe it was just the exhilaration of having such a small youthful body once more. When he was on earth, his body was withered with time. Only constant missions and working out kept his body in slightly working order. He was nearing seventy in that life. Now it felt as though he were a child again, which he supposed he was. "As I said, we won't run out of meat." He gave a wink.

"If you wish to come with us, that's fine. I don't think we will need you though, not if we make it to the first star student rank." Li Wuhan smiled dreamily at the jade vial he held in his hand. "With this, we should make it to the academy earlier than we expected."

Li Wei slapped her brother upside the head and looked at Hong Zhao apologetically. "Please ignore my ignorant brother." She glared at Li Wuhan. "Did you all of a sudden learn some martial arts abilities I don't know about that can protect us? Don't get ahead of yourself!"