The bee hive

Bai Yun kept on slashing his sword one after the other. His attacks only deflected the bees, and did not deal any major damage. Thankfully by moving about, he was able to escape being completely suppressed by making the bees also change their direction of attack.

As he fought, Bai Yun tried to move closer to the bee hive. The tunnels in the hive were smaller than outside, and he would not have to face as many bees in there. But the repeated fighting was taking a toll on Bai Yun. As he slashed, his hand slipped from the sweat, hitting one of the bees in the stinger rather than the body. The bee which was struck spun away and hit another one, killing it in the process. Bai Yun's eyes narrowed as he saw this.

In his past life, all of Bai Yun's fighting experience came after he reached the immortal step. The enemies he had faced from then on, were much more intelligent than the qi step beats in front of him. It was impossible to harm another one with the attacks of one of them. So Bai Yun had never even thought about using such a tactic until now. But once he did so his entire fighting style changed.

Bai Yun kept on deflecting the bees to hit other bees. Since this was the first time he was deploying such tactics, he made quite a few mistakes, even allowing a few bees to scrape by him. But one after another the number of dead bees in the room started to increase. Unfortunately, Bai Yun did not get any achievement points from these bees as they were killed by other bees.

With the reduced pressure, he quickly reached the bee hive and slipped inside. He found himself in a narrow cave, and the number of bees around him instantly reduced, allowing him a moment to breathe. But there were still many other bees in the hive, and he continued his assault.

As he attacked, his sword slid across a bee and hit the wall of the bee hive. Bai Yun was expecting the bee hive to have a hard wall, but it was much softer than he expected, making his sword slide inside it and getting it stuck. Bai Yun's eyes narrowed as he realized that he could not pull it out in time. He cast wind motion without hesitation choosing the direction with the least number of bees. The sword came off the wall as he moved, but at the same time, a stinging pain shot through his shoulder. Even though he chose the safest path, he was still struck by one bee. Bai Yun turned his hand and cut the bee into two.

After this, a cat and mouse chase between the bees and Bai Yun started. He kept on changing his direction and running in random directions again and again. He even cut through the bee hives wall in a few places in order to escape their pursuit.

It was fifteen minutes later that Bai Yun found himself in a narrow gap between the walls. It was barely wide enough for him to squeeze through. He was alone and had somehow thrown off the pursuing bees. He stood there panting as he could not even move. His qi was exhausted and his stamina was running dry too.

With a shaking hand, Bai Yun reached for his shoulder. With a determined look, and panting through his teths, he gripped the stinger that was plunged into his shoulder. He stopped just before he pulled it out, and then ripped up his shirt and balled it up and bit down on hit hard. After this he pulled the stinger out in a single motion.

Bai Yun stopped himself from screaming only by biting down on the cloth. He fell to his knees and his hands clawed at the walls. Every muscle and blood vessel in his body was throbbing and standing out prominently. Even though he had a strength of seventh or even eighth stage of qi condensation, that was due to him triple cultivating in body, soul and qi. Not only that, he had only started on skin sewing and hadn't sewed his shoulders, making them his weakness.

After five minutes Bai Yun had stood up. There were five more stingers in his body. Thankfully he had learned his lesson after the first stinger so that the rest of them had hit places that had been skin sewed, making them not penetrate deeply. He pulled them out with much lower pain than the first one. When he spit out the gag after he was done, there was fresh blood on it.

Bai Yun calmly applied the medicine that had been provided to him. He then sat out and went about to recover his qi and strength as much as possible. Thankfully his techniques were a lot more powerful than the average, and in half an hour he had recovered about a third of his qi. Bai Yun only had one qi replenishing pill on him and he did not want to waste it if he could help it. He had also recovered some stamina at the same time.

By now one of the three hours had already passed, and he did not want to waste any more time. He stood up. For a while now he was confused as to why he had not been attacked until now. There were a lot of bees in the hive and someone should have found him by now. After a moment, he decided to walk in the opposite direction of where he had come from, thus heading deeper into the cave.

The tunnel that he was in could not be considered a proper tunnel. It was more like a gap in the wall and in some places it became exceptionally small. He somehow squeezed through the gap and finally reached the end of the tunnel. As he peeked out from the end of the tunnel, he was stunned. He saw a large five foot tall bee sitting in the middle of a large room, and there were many three foot tall bees flying around her. Behind her were rows and rows of tiny holes which were all filled by larvae.

Bai Yun realized why he was left alone for so long. He was in the quarters of the queen bee, and the rest of the bees were not allowed inside. He stood there for a while and started to count the number of bees in the room. Bai Yun counted one third circle bee, the bee queen, and twenty eight second circle worker bees.

As he saw the numbers he frowned. He could kill any one of them, but he was not sure if he could kill all of them at the same time. So he decided to come back here after he dealt with the rest of the bees and had amassed as many points as he could.

He could not kill all of them in a straight forward battle. Once he was surrounded, he would be in trouble. Thus he knew that his only chance was guerrilla warfare, something he rarely used, but was used against him often in the Grand War.

Bai Yun went into the tunnel and then proceeded to cut out a piece of the beehive a bit larger than himself. He then put some holes in it to hold it better. He slowly moved through the tunnel back to the quarters of the regular bees. The regular bees were only in the first circle and he could easily fool their senses with the Assassin God's techniques.

Bai Yun slowly slid out of the hole, and looked around. He was hidden behind the hive wall, and could not see anything and had to use his soul tendrils to scout.

He saw that the number of bees here were much lower than before. Earlier they had all come together to attack him. Now they had dispersed around the hive in order to find him.

Bai Yun used his soul tendril to attack the wings of one of the bees. Earlier he had to use the soul tendrils extra thought power as he was completely surrounded and needed to find the optimum fighting paths. But now he was free to use his full strength.

The bee that had been attacked lost its balance and flew in Bai Yun's direction. The moment it came close enough, Bai Yun used his sword and split it into two. He was sad about how easy this was. But a moment later he changed his mind.

Bees were social creatures. The moment one of the bees died, the others noticed it immediately. As Bai Yun watched the rest of the bees became agitated. But they had no way to notice him. So he took charge of their confusion and quickly cut down a dozen more bees.

With a start, he realized that the number of bees had increased. Suddenly one of the bees screeched. Bai Yun realized that it had noticed him. It was inevitable. No matter how good his techniques were, he would leave a gap in his concealment when he attacked.

The bees immediately started to surround Bai Yun. Thankfully he was not too far from the tunnel, and he quickly slaughtered his way through the mass of bees. Not only was he more familiar with them by now, there were also not so many as before, so this was not too difficult for him.

Once he reached the tunnel, the bees did not follow him inside, but only crowded around the entrance. Bai Yun frowned as he realized the problem. But after a moment a smile appeared in his lips.

Bai Yun used his sword to make a deep cut in the wall of the tunnel. The bee hives were made with honey, so their hive was made with sheet like structures with a lot of open spaces. A quick look was enough for him to realize that there were no bees behind the wall. Once he realized this, he cut the walls in his way repeatedly until he reached another tunnel. Once he did so he went back to the regular bee quarters and was happy to realize that the number of bees here were much lower than the other tunnel. The bees weren't a smart race, and had simply crowded around the entrance he left through.

With a smile Bai Yun took his wall piece and started his massacre once again.

For the next hour Bai Yun used the hit and run tactics in order to hunt as many bees as he could. Once there was only an hour left of the three hours of free hunting left, Bai Yun decided to stop and took a stock of his hunting. He was surprised to find that he had raked in eight hundred and ninety nine points in total. He was only a hundred and something when he began. Even Bai Yun was stunned by his hunting efficiency.

He then rested for ten more minutes in order to regain his calm. The fight ahead would not be easy, and he had to prepare as much as he could. He looked down at his sword. It was already filled with cracks. It would not last for much longer. The smart thing would be to leave right now.

But after a moment of deliberation, Bai Yun decided to go ahead with his initial plan. He slowly crept toward the queen's quarters. Once he reached there, he carefully peeked out from the tunnel, making sure to hide his presence.

It was time for the final fight to begin.