First step into the garden

Two weeks had passed since the day Bai Yun told his plans to his parents. He broke through to the first stage of qi condensation that night. He then spends the next three days mastering the Moonlight Sword, the Lion's Roar and False Armor.

He finished with the first movement of the lions roar overnight while the first movement of the Moonlight sword only took him an hour. He had to spend a lot of time mastering the false armor skill, as it took too much energy, and he had to stop and recover energy. Only after having a high enough cultivation could he use this freely.

But then he spend the next ten days trying to master Specter Steps, but was completely unsuccessful. As expected of one of the most mysterious movement techniques in the world, he was barely able to trigger the first motion of its qi part. At first, he was only interested in the Specter Steps ability to move unhindered out of restrictions and was planning to switch to his old movement technique after reaching the immortal step, but after studying it, he realized that the Specter Steps was even superior to his old technique in some aspects!

The qi part of Specter Steps was split into four motions, wind motion, soundless motion, traceless motion and ghastly motion. Even after spending a while, even with his understanding of the dao and experience, he was only able to rarely simulate the wind motion. If one mastered the wind motion, one could move freely in the wind, unpredictably and through the smallest of openings. The range of movement one could make would be unrestrained, allowing for a more varied attack pattern. This suited Bai Yun's fighting style.

But he did not study the wind dao in his previous life. He could barely comprehend a part of the wind motion. In the end, he just gave up and studied Shadow Walk, which he quickly comprehended.

After Bai Yun left seclusion, he found the old butler and asked him to take him to the beast garden. The journey, which would have taken Bai Yun days to complete, was finished in a matter of minutes.

In front of Bai Yun stood a wall hundreds of meters tall, and over a hundred meters in depth. In the wall, at regular intervals, there were gates, so that people could go through.

Bai Yun used the Assassin God's disguising technique. Unfortunately, he was not very good at it. Even though many details about the Assassin God were known, what no one seemed to have realized was that he was someone who had walked all three systems simultaneously and that he had reached the god level in all three. This was the critical secret behind his strength as well as the disguise technique.

Since Bai Yun had not started on his body tempering path, there was no way for him to properly implement the technique. He only used some of the surface parts in order to change his face and skin so that no one would easily recognize him.

Bai Yun passed through the wall and entered the beast garden. The places where the beasts were being held were still quite far away, the wall was built as a security measure. He picked a random direction and started to walk. As he walked he saw that almost all of the people here were in groups and most of them were wearing much coarse clothing than the ones worn by Bai Shun and his group. Thankfully no one recognized him, and he was able to move freely.

In the beast garden, all the animals who were trapped inside were extremely ferocious. The reason for creating the beast garden was to give the people of the Bai clan a chance to fight. Thus all the breeds were of ferocious beasts. Any gentle beasts would be quickly wiped out in the environment inside. On top of this, a special pill powder was regularly added to the water inside so as to keep the animals on edge.

Usually, it would be possible for people to tame demonic beasts and use them to fight. There was even an entire profession of beast tamers who specialized in doing so. But it was impossible to tame any of the beasts in the beast garden. The best they could try to get was a cub or infant that had just been born and did not have the chance to be infected yet.

Bai Yun quickly ran toward the vegetation. Soon he entered the forest, where the demonic beasts were reared. The moment he did so, the surrounding clamour from the people quickly quietened. The silence that permeated brought with it an intense pressure. It seemed as if the whole forest was watching you. This would immediately overwhelm people who were here for the first time, and would make them scared and unable to perform properly.

Bai Yun felt comfortable. This reminded him of the time he was being chased by the devils during the Grand War. He had a feeling of being in his natural environment.

He pulled out his sword from the storage ring, and started to walk forward, using the sword to cleave a path forward. As he walked he knew that the most important thing that he had to do in the next few weeks was to build up the muscle memory of the Simple Sword.

The Simple Sword was an extremely powerful technique. Even though its usefulness fell as one progressed until the dao step, it would once again become very powerful at the god step. But in order to use the Simple Sword properly, he had to integrate it into his muscle memory. Otherwise, there would be a slight delay while making a move which would often mean that the optimal time to attack would be lost. As a veteran of tens of thousands of battles, Bai Yun would never make that mistake. The optimal thing would be if his body could react even before his senses had seen an opening.

As he walked, he stopped suddenly. He could sense a life form in front of him, quite a distance away. Bai Yun hid his aura and started walking forward.

In front of him stood a red wolf. Bai Yun had no idea what species this wolf was. There were many species of beasts in the garden and interbreeding of beasts was also common, creating even more variants. The wolf was munching on something. As he neared, the wolf stopped and stood up and turned towards where Bai Yun was. The wolf's eyes had a slight tinge of red due to the madness from the pill powder. Even though Bai Yun hid his aura, he was unable to hide his scent.

Bai Yun exited from the shadow of the tree he was under. He saw that the wolf was in the first circle of qi step, and quickly got ready to fight.

The demonic beast's cultivation was divided into a circle cultivation system. They had steps similar to the human cultivation system. In each step the cultivation was simply divided into nine circles. The higher the cultivation of a beast the more circles it had. A beast at the first circle of the qi stage was considered equivalent to a cultivator in the first three stages of qi condensation. But depending upon their mutation, variation or breed, a beast in the first circle might even be as powerful as someone in the sixth stage of qi condensation if one was unlucky. A dragon in the first circle would even trash someone in the seventh stage of qi condensation.

With a howl, the wolf proceeded to attack him. Bai Yun activated his movement technique and started to move to the side.

Immediately he felt something wrong. An instant later Bai Yun found himself on the ground, lying face first. The wolf who was in mid air seemed to be as confused as Bai Yun and sailed past him in an instant.

As he was lying on the ground, Bai Yun frowned. He had noticed what happened earlier. His battle instincts written deep within his soul had acted up, and he had moved the same way he would have when he was a god. Which meant that he subconsciously tried to move according to his old movement method. He neither had the cultivation nor did his have body the experience for that. As a result, he tripped and fell.

He had no cultivation until now, and in the earlier fights, he had used his soul to fight. It was only now, when he used his body and qi to fight, that he noticed this problem. His priorities of what he had to do once again changed. The most important thing was to get rid of his habits from his past life. Bai Yun was starting to get tired of his plans having to be changed all the time, forcing him to speed up his timetable.

All of this happened in an instant. Bai Yun used his soul to push the wolf away from him, as he leaped back. Using one of his soul tendrils to keep himself in check, Bai Yun once again took up the position. As the wolf, who was disoriented from the push readied himself, Bai Yun pushed himself forward.

The wolf once again lunged at Bai Yun. He stepped to the side and spun past the wolf. As he did so, he gave it a slash. After the two of them passed by each other, they stopped. Bai Yun frowned. He could sense that his attack hadn't left a deep enough cut on the beast. It seemed as if this wolf was a rather strong one among the normal first circle beasts, as it was equal to someone in the third stage of qi condensation. Thankfully it wasn't a mutant or a variant.

Mutant beasts were beasts whose one aspect was changed due to chance at birth. For example, a mutant bear could have stronger claws or a tougher hide, or even simply a thicker coat of fur. A variant was born from two different beasts, and their power somehow merged and created a new beast. The most famous example of this is the child of the heaven swallowing python and the hydra, the basilisk.

Bai Yun kept on sidestepping the wolf, and the wolf kept on attacking. At he sidestepped, he kept on delivering slashes to the wolf. Even though each attack wasn't very powerful, they quickly piled on to become quite deadly. Soon the wolf was fully drenched in blood. Bai Yun was also quite tired and sweating by now. In order to save the single spiral of qi he had in his dantian, he had used his body to move as much as possible.

The wolf then looked at Bai Yun viciously. Then it broke into a run and leapt straight at him with a wide open mouth, intending to finish him off quickly. Bai Yun knew that the wolf was staking it all in a single move, and knew he had to attack in full power also, as he wouldn't have a chance to dodge at the speed the wolf was running. He quickly activated the first move of the Moonlight Sword, a single ray of Moonlight. A single ray of moonlight was about condensing all the energy into a single point and then attacked at full power. Immediately his sword was thrust forward, and the sword tip drew a beautiful arc in the air with a shining point drawing a trail behind it as it flew.

His sword was pointed straight at the wolf's mouth, and it went through and came out the back of its throat. As he stood there, his sword thrust out, the wolf swiped its paws forward in a desperate struggle. Bai Yun let go of his sword and stepped backward quickly, but not before a single swipe had hit him and left a gash in his shoulder.

As he held his shoulder and stepped back, the wolf looked at him one last time, before falling over dead.