CHAPTER 40: A CAVE IN THE DESERT

Meanwhile, Houryu with the hollow mask on his face opened a garganta again, but this time to hueco mundo.

He walked into the garganta again and this time when he came out of the garganta he was in hueco mundo, standing on the air again.

'There isn't really much to see' he thought to himself as all he could see before him was endless dunes of gray sand, but when he looked over his shoulder, he saw something he wasn't expecting to see.

A cave in the desert.

This piqued his interest as there weren't many of these around in hueco mundo and he turned and landed to investigate the cave.

He slowly walked towards the cave leaving footprints in the sand that were sure to disappear in minutes.

As he reached the entrance to the cave, a white blur suddenly rushed at him from within the cave and struck at him.

Houryu quickly stretched forth his hand to catch what seemed like a giant white sword aimed for his head.

As he caught the sword and held it in place and then looked at who had actually tried to attack him, he was shocked almost out of his mind.

"No fu**ng way." he exclaimed as he was shocked that what took clone houryu over five years and he still couldn't find anything, he had found in less than five minutes, and he hadn't even started searching yet.

'Who even sets these things up like this?' he wondered as he still held on to the huge great sword like arm of Tier Harribel.

Harribel trying to pull her hand away from this new hollow that she just met realized that he was physically stronger than her and she couldn't get her sword arm free without doing something unconventional, and so she did.

Harribel quickly gathered condensed spiritual energy into the form of a tiny ball of yellow light on her great sword and was about to fire it at Houryu when he suddenly threw her inside the cave with so much force, that it was only due to her super strong hierro that she wasn't made into paint for the walls.

That didn't stop her from getting plastered into the wall and leaving a body size indentation in the wall before collapsing to the floor after the counterattack that Houryu made on her.

As she slowly stood up from the ground, Houryu walked into the cave while wondering what he could do to make her talk as now that they started fighting there wasn't hope for the peaceful conversation that he would have wanted in the first place.

He could just beat her up into submission and then get information from her, but he wanted to avoid that especially since the information is not something that is easy to learn about as he doubted even, she knew much.

Also, he was already feeling himself beginning to lose himself to the blood lust again, so he decided to do something else.

As he finished up his thoughts, he was already standing before the shakily standing Harribel who was now cautiously staring at him as she regained her fighting posture.

Harribel got into a swordsman stance and got ready to charge at Houryu who stood before her when suddenly he pulled a white gleaming sword from what seemed like an earring, but her surprise at him doing that didn't elicit any opening in her guard.

Houryu looked at her with a slight appraising look evident in his eyes, ' It looks like as canon said, she is a master swordsman which is quite surprising as she obviously didn't train with swords as a hollow, maybe before she died as a human, she was already a master swordsman or swordswoman in her case.'

'Now I'm a bit interested in who she was before she died.' Houryu thought as he looked at this bunch of surprises while now holding on to his sword.

Harribel quickly lunged at him with careful but complex footwork, but he quickly parried her first sword strike to the side and then continued blocking her strikes and parrying them continuously, staying pasive throughout.

Suddenly, Harribel stepped back from her continuous attacks and went into a lunging posture before disappearing, leaving a loud booming sound and then reappearing right behind Houryu and slicing her sword down.

Somehow Houryu's sword was still able to snake itself to over his head and then block her attack coming from behind and then Houryu finally jumped back, but Harribel didn't plan to give up her momentum and disappeared again leaving another booming sound and then reappearing right in front of Houryu trying to slash horizontally at him.

But before she couuld gain enough power on her sword slash, she heard a clang and her sword stopped midswing. She quickly looked down, only to see Houryu sword stabbed towards hers and stopping her attack mid swing before she could even get any attack power on it.

Houryu then raised his sword and slashed downwards towards her head, eliciting a quick response from Harribel who quickly raised her sword to block as she couldn't gain enough speed to dodge this attack.

She blocked the strike but quickly got pushed back a few steps.

'Heavy.' She thought as she quickly used sonido to disappear again in another burst of speed and move at high speed towards Houryu, but this time instead of staying passive, he actually struck back at her, and they quickly had a few clashes.

Harribel continuously changed directions and tempo of her attacks, but she was never able to get a hit in, on the contrary she now had a few scratch wounds from Houryu's sword ever since he started attacking instead of being passive.

Houryu then just got into a different stance and then she heard his voice for the first time.

"Arie Swordsmanship: White Nebula." he called out as he swung his sword towards her and sending what looked like a white sea of stars shaped into a sword lash at her.

She quickly put up her sword to block the attack and then it hit her sending her into the walls of the cave, again. Only this time with a bigger explosion.

She was sent into the wall again, but luckily, the attack didn't seem to be meant to kill her, though that didn't stop it from hitting her harder than a train.

She shakily stood up again in the cloud of dust that had been kicked up by her smashing into the walls,

Suddenly she felt an arm around her waist that then drew her closer until she collided with a shirtless body and then she felt a pair of lips on her face.