A Path To Zhuji [IV]

"What's wrong with this boy? Is he sick in the head or trying to properly waste my time?" 

The steward looked at Ju Feng in bewilderment before raising his voice.

"Hey you! Why are you behaving this way? I still have a lot to do, get on with it and stop wasting my time. I'm warning you."

"Senior, I assure you, I'm not trying to waste your time. I really want to cut the trees, but they are too strong."

The Steward couldn't believe what he was hearing. Even outsiders knew one couldn't cut the trees with inner energy. It was practically impossible. He could now clearly see the insanity of the outer disciple.

"How can you be using your Chi to cut the Ten-Trigram spirit bamboo trees? If you are really trying, you'll use your natural strength, not your stupid Chi. Now, can you carry on so we can leave here on time?"

"You can count on that, senior."

Pure body strength. He never thought of that before. A task which required a cultivator's natural strength was a reminder of the mortality of life. Well, he should be able to relate to the requirements. His body and bones were already strong enough to rival a silver snow bear. What was missing was the necessary information. Knowledge was truly the key to success. 

Ju Feng shook his head slightly at the simplicity of the task to him. Having known how to go by it, he landed his stroke on the bamboo stem with greater success. There was no reflective shock or any repercussion. He continued to land his swing on the bamboo and chips started to appear on the bamboo stem after each swing.

The swings continued to land cleanly on the trees, and after ten minutes, he finished with the bamboo tree and then moved to the next one. It took him three hours to finish cutting the twenty bamboo tree and arranged them into rolls of tens. 

After finishing with the arrangements of the cut bamboo trees, he looked happily at the steward who was basically annoyed with the time taken to perform the punishment.

"Heaven's tears! You took this long and you're happy? Nobody has ever spent much time like this. Anyway, thank you for finishing at all. I believe you still want to participate in the competition, don't you? Let's get moving then."

They returned to the outer hall where other sect stewards were dividing the outer disciples into groups. Ju Feng quickly joined the disciples on the instructions of the stewards who were eager to get going. There were five groups of twenty disciples each, all together and he was in the fifth group. The were lined up according to their group as they walked towards the sect's arena.

The sect's grand master, the masters, the associate masters, some sect stewards and other sect's disciples were already at the arena when the outer disciples marched in.

The grandmaster raised his magnified voice which easily filled the whole arena.

"I welcome you all to the annual Bloodgrit competition. It is our tradition to welcome new disciples into the inner sect through this competition where they would be directly under the sect's associate masters after being successful. We know it would've been difficult for you to enter this sect directly to become inner disciples due to different reasons. But you have the chance to do so through this competition, and I implore you all to grab it with both hands."

He stopped to look around the arena which was in total silence before continuing. 

"We have a total of twenty masters who are assisted by their associates. They're with great abilities and powers that will surely help to further your development and advancement in leaps. After successfully completing the competition, the masters and their associates will choose ten of you to be directly under them, into their folds. So I tell you, give it your sweat and blood, and maybe you can be one of the chosen. We'll start with the collection of the magical cores from the dale of the low-tier beasts. Let the competition begin."

Ju Feng's mind began to spin fast. Ah, Charat planet? Titan torso! How did he get himself involved in all these? The planet wasn't his birth world in the first place. How could he be hunting for beasts cores in a strange land Would he turn to beasts' food himself in a foreign world? How ironic would it be, for him to be eaten by a magical turtle while searching for a core he never wanted? His mother, grandparents, uncle Luyang and his friends at the Last Sages sect.

Heavens tears!

Having no idea where the dale of beasts was, he decided to stay in the middle of the group of disciples. He couldn't ask any disciple for help or direction since it was every disciple to himself or herself. Pretending to know his way around, he increased his pace to match that of the speeding disciples. He couldn't even use the Swift-Steps technique not to give much away on his identity. The generally known light steps was enough for him to keep up with them.

Thirty minutes later, they arrived at the dale of the low-tier beasts. The haven of the lower magical beasts was a wide area which stretched for miles, and was sorrounded by mountains and hills. Although, the dale mostly contained less powerful magical beasts, it was not a place to be taken lightly. Sometimes, there were lower beasts who would evolve to mid-tier ones or even high-tier ones. It was the beasts a cultivator couldn't detect that were the most dangerous.

The good thing? The magical beasts were not sentient animals. So, they could not reason or strategize. They only knew either to attack or to run away.

Since it was a very wide area, the disciples spread out looking for magical beasts to take their cores. Some of them were combing the outside perimeters for the easy beasts which were scanty, while some ventured a bit further into the dale where many beasts resided. Before long, many disciples had already slaughtered a number of magical beasts and were making their ways back to the sect. From what he saw of the outer disciples, he knew their strength wasn't inferior to his. He was on par with some of them, while others were even stronger than him.

Were these people eating rare rocks and metals? They were not even Zhuji cultivators yet. How come they were so strong?

Glancing ocassionaly at some of them who were bloody from their battles, he decided to find an easy beast which wouldn't give him a bloody battle. Since he had never hunted a beast before, he would try not to engage the beasts head on like them. More so, he would've prefered a weapon at this stage, but he had no weapon. His thought went to the training sword, he should have kept one sword in his spatial sac for times like this.

But who would have thought?

Gradually, Ju Feng drifted away to the mountain side looking for something to use as a weapon when he felt a deep sense of danger approaching his back. He didn't need to turn for him to know it was a really big and dangerous animal, and was closely behind him.