5 Blood

Convincing my mother to let me do martial arts was proving to be difficult, very difficult. Maybe vomiting bood when I was 3 years old, might have made her a little apprehensive. It's not like I could go and say to her: "Hi mom, no need to worry, your son is a cultivator and the world is filled with human-eating devils. I was just training since when I was born so..... No problem!".If it went well she would think that her son was crazy and the worst one was her abandoning me. So I thought that it would be best convincing her that I am healthy and would not die from a little punch or kick.

Or so I thought at the time. It took just one month. Only one single month and I was getting hunted by a straw demon in the mountain.

It all began with me wanting to try some serious training. So I told mom that I was going to play with my friends, just to go to the mountain. Ger crying of happiness was something unexpected though. It made me realize how much of a loner I must seem to others.

The first thing I did when I arrived was training tree climbing. While I was lost in the moment, concentrating everything in the energy manipulation, I felt something. It seemed like a mass of vile darkness, corrupted to the core. Every single hair in my body was standing. I could. That moment of hesitation was enough for it to catch up to me. I could not run away anymore.

From the bushes appeared a disgusting monster, half man half insect. Half of his body was that of a centipede. It felt so disgusting and so wrong at the same time. Like someone had failed in creating him.

I tried running and applying ki into my legs to run away, but he was already near. If I even tried to run and showed him my back, I would end up dead in a moment.

Every single muscle of my body was shivering. I was scared. I had never fight anything in this world and im that moment, in front of me, there was this strange thing that probably wanted to devour me. Even though I was scared, I tried talking to the stray devil in front of me, hoping that maybe I was wrong. Maybe he did not want to harm me. I tried to seem confident and , most importantly, not scared.

"Who are you ? Why do you keep following me?"

"HAHAHAHA what do you think boy?! When there is such a succulent candy in front of me, do you think I would let it escape. Don't worry, I'll give you a painless death before eating you. You see, I am such an angel, even though I am a devil. "

I despaired but I did not give up. While trying to distract him, I was moving most of the ki on my limbs, while leaving at least 20 % of the energy in defending the rest of my body part. I needed to keep talking and distract him from the flow in case he could see it, so I asked him.

"A devil? You don't seem one though?! How were you able to find me? Why do you want eat me?"

"Oh, just shut up. A fucking piglet like you should just shut up and get eaten, but I'll tell you this. Your smell is so sweet that I am having difficulty controlling myself."

So he just lunged forward toward me and tried to slash me with some claws.

In that brief moment I felt my blood freezing, but I forced my body to move , using the taichi I practiced, and deflected the left arm slashing towards me moving my right arm, my trunk towards it. It hurted, but I still managed to deflect it. The moment I managed to divert his left arm, I moved my body to the left, while concentrating 60 % of the ki in the elbow, and hit the arm coming from the right to slash me. I wanted only to avoid getting hit by it, but, when my elbow connected with his arm, I shattered his limb and blood, bones , meat bursted away. In that moment as if I was just repeating some katas alone, I moved my left arm concentrating all the ki of my body, every single energy, and thrusted my palm directly into the breastbone.

When I stopped in front of me there was only his lower body and his medium trunk. Everything else, everything, just blowed up in the direction of my thrust. In that moment I realized what I had done. I killed someone. I survived.