2

Following Hong a bit deeper into the forest, they all stopped when Hong stopped and raised a hand before squatting infront of a slightly overgrown bush. Looking at each other for a second, they all followed his action and squatted near the Bush Hong was. Seeing them all present , Hong slightly parted the Bush and pointed at what had gained his attention.

A herd of twenty horned sheep, all above bronze rank grazing peacefully like they were defenseless. Lu Piao raised his crossbow to fire a bolt but stopped when a hand was put on it. Hong, the owner of the hand turned turned to his new acquaintances before mouthing 'leave it to me' and disappeared.

They looked wide eyed at where the warrior was a second ago, but before they did anything that would alert the horned sheep, Nei Li pointed his finger in a random direction. Following the direction pointed by his finger with their eyes, the group was suprised to see Hong on a tree branch right above the left side of the herd, his right hand tightly gripping the now unsheathed sword in a reversed grip.

Light purple energy cloaked Hongs body without a warning, before pandemonium ensued.

Hong angled himself to the ground from the branch before launching himself foreward rapid enough to cause a slight boom. But as he moved shot out he spun his body , swinging his sword with the entire momentum, releasing one long screw shaped slash that took out multiple sheep lives before cutting deeply to the ground.

But as it was yet happening, Hong landed heavily on the earth,his foot sinking an inch into the ground due to the speed while his upper body was turned ninety degrees from the momentum of the revolution. The sheep, now noticing their fallen comrads immediately tied their demise to the human infront of them with the meager intelligence they had inherited and charged towards him, enhancing the sharpness of their horns with visible amounts of spiritual energy.

Alarmed the youths who were hidden behind the bush opened their mouths to warn Hong , but it wasn't necessary.

Changing his reversed grip into a foreward grip, he spun his entire torso, moving his energy coated sword in a horizontal slash with enough momentum to cut right through the skulls of the few beasts closest to him .

The beasts , seeing the power of the swordsman infront of them had their survival instincts blare danger, so they did what they did instinctively in face of danger, haul ass.

But Hong had no intention of sparing them.

The youths who were observing Hong, once again lost sight of him . Thought their eyes saw nothing they heard several consecutive 'booms' representing multiple displacements of air in a short period of time.

Hong then suddenly stumbled into the bush, almost falling, but the young spiritualists were mesmerised by the scene behind him, that they didn't notice him. The sheep, each a few meters apart from the other, were completely beheaded. But Hong's blade had decapitated them with such speed that the heads were spinning rapidly as arcs of blood flew in the air creating circular patterns.

While most the young spiritualists were filled with awe, from this sight, Nei Li was shocked to the core. As a person who had explored the upper draconic realms and many other upper realms in his previous life, he was no stranger to sword techniques. But the sword he saw today in his own tiny world, on hands of the warrior youth was more exquisite than most he had seen.

Walking towards the corpse of the nearest sheep he looked at the sword mark to confirm what he had seen. This was a masterpiece in sword techniques, a piece of art one could say. The sword cut was so smooth ,even the cut on the bone looked like it was suppose to be there and as a sword user in his previous life, Nei Li knew how hard it was to wield the sword with such mastery. Then and there he made the decision to make this warrior into a spiritualist, no matter how much resources he would use, because a sword master of this caliber would give him a massive edge against the sage emperor.