Enemies crossing path

'Annoying flies never leave.' Bai Yun thought. 

The last time they met, Bai Song had made Bai Shan go into secluded cultivation after losing to him. And now it seemed as if Bai Shan had lived up to his name as a genius and had broken through to the sixth stage of qi condensation. But it could be seen that he had broken through with pills and had an unstable foundation. And he had run over here straight away after exiting without even waiting for his cultivation to stabilize. 'Idiot.' Bai Yun strengthened his assumption of Bai Shan.

Bai Yun simply stared at them. They were standing around looking pretentious and making fun of everyone they could see, saying stuff like how their clothes were of bad quality, or they were dirty and so on. Bai Yun stayed on top of the cliff for a while to see if he could spot any demon beasts or anything of the like but was unable to. He gave up on scouting and decided to enter the weed valley.

"Hey, dead guy." He heard Bai Shan call out to him.

Bai Yun turned to look at him.

"What are you doing? If someone like you goes into the weed valley you are going to die. You better not go in." One of the people following Bai Shan said.

While wondering if they had nothing better to do with their lives, Bai Yun continued on his way.

"You, how dare you ignore me." The kid darted at him.

Bai Yun quickly stepped out of his way. Then he send a couple of jabs to the brat's back, and he fell face-first into the ground.

"How dare you." The rest of the group roared and darted at him. Just as Bai Yun was getting ready to fight, he heard a voice behind him. "Let him go."

Bai Yun turned to look at Bai Shan in shock. He was not the only one. Bai Shan's group and even the other people around were in shock. For a moment Bai Yun thought he saw a look of glee in Bai Shan's eyes. But he was not sure.

"But leader he attacked me when I just wanted to be kind and give him a warning. How can we just let him go." The kid on the ground said.

'I see. Their entire group must have been in an accident and gotten the memory center of their brains damaged. Poor souls.' Bai Yun thought.

"Just take a look at him. He is so injured that he would die if you just poke him accidentally. There are so many people around. Are you going to kill him here? Besides weaklings like him would simply die in the weed valley anyway. So just let him go to his death." Bai Shan said.

'So he has a brain cell after all. His parents must be so proud. I feel like crying.'

"Hmph. Thank the boss you are getting out of here alive." The moron group said.

Ignoring the morons Bai Yun walked into the weed valley. His sight was quickly covered up by the vegetation. He used his sword to part the weeds as he walked. As he walked forward he also used his soul tendrils to search the region around him, but frowned when he realized that there was a suppressive force around him. He picked a random direction and started walking forward.

Suddenly he thrust his sword to the right. A small snake was embedded on the tip of his sword. This was only a weak first circle demonic beast, and was easily disposed of by him. In lands like these snake type beasts were the most common. This was because there were quite a good number of them and they were harder to spot, as well as had a greater mobility in the grass.

As he walked, he kept his perception on the air. But soon he started to frown. Even in such a dense area, the wind was flowing. Not only could he see that there was wind above the weeds, but even between the weeds, air moved. Bai Yun had a feeling that there was something important in this, and focused his entire attention on the air.

A few hours later, he had quickly reached quite far inward. Till now he had yet to encounter anything dangerous. In the weed valley, your result depended almost exclusively on luck. So Bai Yun had simply walked around, often changing his direction.

Suddenly his perception felt an empty area in front of him. He quickly got out of his thoughts and focused his perception in front of him. He could see a clearing in front.

In the weed valley clearings were rather rare. Only in two cases would they appear. Either a powerful demonic beast had done it in order to keep its home safe from surprise attacks, or a strong mutant weed or a group of mutant weeds had absorbed all the nutrients in the surrounding area.

Bai Yun hid his aura, and parted the weeds in front of him. As he peeked into the clearing, he could see a mutant weed in the middle, with three fruits on it. There were two large fruits for qi and body cultivation, and an unripe fruit that could be used by demonic beasts.

Even though Bai Yun was overjoyed, he did not lose focus. He stayed there and kept watch for a while, in case there was some danger. Even after waiting for an hour, there was no danger.

It was already afternoon, Bai Yun knew that he could not wait for much longer. In the dark his eyesight would be much lower, and if he came across some beasts, he would be in a lot of danger without his sight. In the qi step, perception was not as effective as sight.

He moved towards the fruits slowly. He stood in front of them for a moment and then reached towards the body fruit. As his hands clasped around the body fruit, a smile appeared on his face.

His god sense sensed the danger before he ever could. It started to scream from the approaching danger. A second later his perception caught something moving much faster than him towards him. Bai Yun realized that he would not be able to dodge it. A fear of death washed over him. Instinctively he gained some power from the depths of his body, and launched wind motion, shooting backwards in an instant.

Bai Yun had launched wind motion with all his strength, and had somehow managed to activate it under pressure. But the movement was crooked and as a result, he ended up falling on the ground. He used the momentum to roll away, and then stabbed his sword into the ground. He used the sword to stop himself, and entered into a kneeling position. He could sense that his left ankle was slightly swollen. It wasn't twisted, but he seemed to have stepped a little too hard on it when he landed. He knew that his movement was severely compromised.

As he looked up, Bai Yun's back broke out in cold sweat. In front of him was a meter long snake. The snake was blinking at him, almost surprised that he had managed to get away. It seemed to be guarding the demon fruit until it was ripe.

Bai Yun recognized the snake immediately. It was a grey rock python.

A grey rock python was a snake he had known about even in his past life. A grey rock python had a trace of a god bloodline, and could even reach the immortal step in the future. When he had started training in battle techniques in his previous life, he had battled a grey rock python, so he knew how formidable one was.

The one in front of him seemed to be only in the second circle of the qi step. And one that had just entered the second step to boot. But Bai Yun knew that this little snake was extremely strong. It could easily wipe out Bai Shan and his group. If it was at the peak of the second step he should just have tried to run. Even with all his experience he would still find the grey rock python a difficult opponent. This was because, without the destruction dao essence, his fighting style primarily depended on disrupting the opponent's rhythm to fight. This allowed him to fight against even stronger opponents. But this would not work against something as strong and fast as the grey rock python.

The grey rock python did not have any venom. In order to compensate, it was extremely fast and flexible. Its scales were exceptionally hard, and its tail was very strong.

Bai Yun placed the body fruit that he still had in his hands into his storage ring. Bai Yun placed his weight on his right leg. The earlier attack by the python was so fast as it had laid in wait for a while, it would not be so fast in regular fights. He took the sword in his right hand, and crouched and turned his body to reduce the exposed area. Then Bai Yun started walking towards the snake.

The snake that was surprised by its failure had recovered by now. It lunged at Bai Yun once again. Bai Yun sent two tendrils of soul into his sword. The technique of sending a soul into the sword was a dangerous one. It allowed him to react faster and move his sword faster in order to target the snake more efficiently. This way he could target the snake's weakness more, and even with its flexibility, he could still keep up. And for the grey rock python, its only weaknesses were its eyes and mouth.

But this technique also had its weakness. Since his soul was merged with the weapon, every time it collided with the snake it would hurt his soul and give him a headache. And if it was struck too hard, it could even damage the soul tendrils, forcing him to cultivate them again.

Bai Yun thrust his sword forward rapidly. It struck the snake repeatedly at an angle, changing its direction and sending it flying in the air. Along with this Bai Yun's soul started hurting and he had a headache.

The grey rock python was angry. It started to simply spring itself at Bai Yun. In response he struck it away. But soon he had to stop as the headache was getting worse. Thankfully by now, he had gotten an understanding of the python's rhythm and he stopped forcefully changing its direction. Bai Yun simply used the edge of the sword to glide along the python's body, and flick his wrist to gently change its direction just enough so that the python would slide past his body at a safe distance and couldn't flick his tail at him. As he was doing so he started moving towards the center of the clearing, so the python would not have any chances to attack him from the weeds.

The python seemed angry at his tactics. It stood on its tail, and screeched at him. Then coiling it's tail, it flew straight towards Bai Yun with an open mouth. A cold light flashed in his eyes. Immediately Bai Yun ran the qi spiral in his dantian and send four rays of Moonlight at the snake. His sword controlled by the soul tendrils, had struck the same scale in the snake's forehead repeatedly. He also had to pay a huge price for this. His eyes were bloodshot, and blood could be seen in the corner of his mouth. After the snake, that had been send flying back, stood up and felt the blood trickling down from where it scale used to be, it screeched even louder, and this time, slithered to Bai Yun, and turning his body, struck at him with its tail.

Bai Yun had almost used up his qi and only had a trace of it left, He used everything he had to Jump in the direction of the strike, mitigating most of the strike. He still threw up blood in mid air and then rolled on the ground before getting on one knee.

In his right hand he held his sword. In his left hand was a blue fruit.

It was the qi fruit.