The Lone Wanderer

5 years ago

"Run, Hui'er! I will hold the Fierce Tiger Tribe warriors off! You take our son back to our Fan Clan and tell them what's happening. Go!"

A strongly built man with a middle-aged appearance yells towards his wife, who is holding a 5-year-old boy with a weak body in her arms.

The man was looking fearlessly at an approaching cloud of dust while yelling.

The boy, in his mother's arms, is silently watching the proceedings with his calm and strange incandescent black eyes.

His body was weaker than any other youngster of his clan; just like his parents have weaker bodies than any of the cultivators of the Clan despite being quite powerful cultivators among the Clan's Power Ranking.

The woman holding the boy, however, immediately starts to run at maximum speed away from the cloud of dust that is now rapidly increasing in size.

The child begins to have tears form in his eyes as the mother and son draw further away from the father who is facing the oncoming danger.

As the father stood to wait, yellow qi begins to emanate from his body, full of explosive power.

Stray strands of lightning flicker within the yellow qi, manifesting the physical form of his thunder-qi, bolts of thunder.

As the cloud of dust comes within a few kilometres of him, clear silhouettes of roughly two dozen people are seen upon the backs of a variety of tigers.

The variety of tiger breeds ridden by the savage barbarians is quite wide.

However, one thing is similar between all of the warriors' mounts; they are all vicious in appearance with an aura of blood strongly emanating from them.

As the group of warriors approach to less than a kilometre of the man, the bloodstains on the warriors and their mounts are clear to see.

Once the group gets to roughly 100 meters of the man, they stop and start to surround the man as best as possible.

The man though had chosen to wait at a narrow entrance to the pass that his wife and son were running through; so completely circling the man was impossible.

Once the warriors were in place, a large warrior on his blood red tiger and wielding a giant war hammer approaches to just outside 50 meters of the man.

He was clearly the leader of the group, judging by the fact that his tiger was the strongest and his aura was commanding.

After staring at the man guarding the choke point for almost 10 seconds, the leader of the warriors opens his mouth and speaks in a domineering fashion.

"You dare to bar our passage! You are going to die! All you are doing is making your wife and son die without the man of their family with them."

The man still stares silently determinedly at the leader, his mouth set in a grim line that indicates his readiness to battle.

The man waits, staying in position because he knows that the group of warriors don't have a single archer among them.

The Fierce Tiger Tribe are extremely disdainful of archers and the few archers they had were killed by a couple self-sacrificing clansmen; knowing the dilemma the warriors would be put in once they lost all their archers.

The warriors, unlike the cultivators of the man's clan, focused entirely on self-enhancement with their Qi due to their bloodline preventing Qi from leaving their body.

Therefore, the Fierce Tiger Tribe cultivators were called warriors and they had no way to launch ranged attacks apart from their archers.

The leader sighed heavily, knowing that the killing of their archers at the cost of their own men was done strategically by the Fan Clan cultivators the minute they knew they had lost the battle.

There was only one option, a full charge towards the man guarding the choke point.

Although he would lose at least half his men and waste most of the remaining daylight; the leader knew that this was the only option left open to him.

So, he gave the signal to his men and the siege against the lone cultivator began.

Upon feeling the commands of their owners, the variety of tigers unleashed fierce and bloodthirsty roars before charging unhesitatingly at the cultivator.

The man immediately started unleashing a large amount of yellow qi, condensing it into 4 large, 1-inch thick bolts of thunder that circled his arms with 2 bolts on each arm.

Once the thunder was condensed to the man's satisfaction; he raised his arms and with a thunderous noise, the lightning raced towards the charging tigers.

The 4 bolts of thunder overwhelmed the warriors who were paralysed as they resisted the thunder, the bolts turning into yellow qi that invaded their bodies through their acupoints.

Out of the 4 warriors and their mounts hit by the condensed thunder, only 1 of the warriors wasn't instantly killed.

However, he was gravely injured and likely wouldn't survive anyway.

The man, knowing he had no more time for another ranged attack, infused his yellow-qi into his body as much as possible and drew his twin short swords. Because of their weaker-than-normal body and the way they fought, the couple dual wielded short swords and daggers for the husband and wife respectively.

With a noise like a thunderbolt, the man dashed straight towards the weakest warrior. Two steel rays of light flashed before another noise sounded and the man was gone.

The warrior he attacked, however, fell down limply with a slit throat.

The warrior's tiger also fell down, dead, with the same injury.

After the man had killed almost half a dozen of the weaker warriors in a similar fashion, the leader and his stronger men finally surrounded him.

With loud war cries, the warriors swung their large, heavy weapons at the man who dodged their attacks with all he could.

If even one swing connected, the man knew he was dead because his weaker body would be unable to handle the attack.

Whenever he had the opportunity, the man unleashed a swift and deadly strike against one of the warriors' mounts.

Although he didn't strike very often, when he attacked, it always resulted in the death of a warrior or their mount.

After almost 30 minutes, the man felt himself starting to tire.

Analysing his situation, the man rolled under one of the mounts as the rider made it rise onto its hind legs to increase the power of their downswing.

The warriors, surprised at the sudden turn of events, couldn't stop the man from retreating into the narrow pass.

As the warriors go to chase after the man, a sudden yell from their leader stopped them in their tracks.

Less than a moment later, a rumbling and sudden explosive noise sound from the pass.

The remaining warriors saw a massive bolt of lightning, over 5-inches thick shear a great amount of the overhang at the entrance to the pass.

The debris from the explosion falls heavily upon the ground between the rock faces at the entrance to the pass, sealing the pass temporarily shut. If the warriors had kept chasing the man, the rocks would have crushed well over a half dozen of the remaining dozen or so warriors.

The leader looks at the sun quickly, before commanding his troops to set-up camp.

The day had didn't have enough light left to make any significant progress on clearing the barrier of rocks; so the leader thought he may as well give his remaining warriors an early night and rise early tomorrow to continue the hunt.

Little did he know, however, that by the time tomorrow came around, that he would stand no hope of killing the escapees of the ambush.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The man kept running.

After he had caused the overhang to collapse, he had not stopped running at a speed he wouldn't need to use qi to maintain.

While running, his acupoints absorbed the ambient natural qi around him to refine into his thunder-qi.

He also had metal-qi, but it was useless against enemies that fight with pure physical enhancement like the Fierce Tiger Tribe.

Metal qi was better at using against opponents that were like him, weak defences and techniques focused on pure offence; it lacked the raw explosive power thunder-qi had that could actually penetrate the tough physical defence of the Fierce Tiger Tribe Warriors.

The leader of the group sent to kill them was especially tough to injure; he had earth-qi, so even his explosively strong thunder-qi was weak against that warrior's rock-solid defence.

Luckily, the warriors of Fierce Tiger Tribe were nothing but muscle-brained barbarians, otherwise, if they actually coordinated their attacks, then the man would have been killed in a third of the time that he fought the group.

The man ran through the night, and when morning came he saw a surprising sight.

His wife, Fan Hui, was feeding their son some roast meat from a fire; chatting with a lone wanderer who had pure white hair, yet had the face and body of a fit young man with an average appearance. The wanderer was unconsciously wary of the strange wanderer, as he emitted an aura of power that gave the man a suppressed feeling of fear.

As the man got closer, he started releasing bullets of cold sweat.

It was apparent from the feeling of the natural qi immediately surrounding the wanderer that he was a cultivator of extremely high power; even with the difference it cultivation, the man could tell that the wandering cultivator was far beyond him.

The way he blended with, yet was independent of the surrounding natural qi was something that the man had never felt before; even from the old monsters of his clan who were at the peak of cultivation.

It was as if he was above the natural world, an ethereal existence.

However, upon seeing the wanderer happily chatting to his wife and son made the father secretly relieved.

Clearly, the wanderer was happy about something and that meant that the chances of him killing them because he was annoyed were slim.

The wanderer, as if feeling the presence of the man, turned around and smiled at the man when he reached within 10 meters of the fire.

"Come, come. You are Fan Heng correct? Your beautiful wife Fan Hui has been telling me about you."

The man slowly, and cautiously walked over while still remaining as polite as he could be.

He didn't want to offend this mysterious expert because he was trying to hard not to offend him, that would just be ironic!

The wanderer, as if sensing his thoughts, laughed heartily before merrily assuring the man of his good-nature.

"It's ok, Fan Heng. As long as you do not insult me, you are perfectly fine being cautious. Being honest, if I met someone of my strength when I was as strong as you, I would certainly be just as cautious. I would likely be even more so since I know just how powerful someone of my strength is hahaha."

The man smiled nervously, yet relaxed slightly and approached in a more casual way.

Although he still had a subservient air, he wasn't acting unnecessarily cautious and even felt a little relaxed around the wanderer now.

The wanderer, after spending a while speaking to the couple as their son watched on, suddenly had a serious air around him.

"Kind couple, if it is ok with you… May I please examine your son? You have nothing to worry about. If he is who I am searching for, then he will get the chance to change his life. If he isn't, then as a thank you for your kindness and lack of fear I will solve your current predicament anyway. It is rare enough that I can just converse normally with people, even when they aren't aware of my identity and don't know my strength; it is quite nostalgic for me. So, may I please examine your son?"

Upon hearing his question, the couple suddenly tensed slightly, however, after hearing the wanderer's sincere reassurances they agree easily to his request.

After all, it was a small request that didn't require anything of them in the slightest and he would be solving their current crisis regardless of what the results of his request were.

With a serene, yet serious expression on his face, the wanderer gently held the hand of their son as he closed his eyes.

After merely a moment, the wanderer's eyes opened an expression of joy, tempered with a large amount of sadness within his eyes.

"Dear couple, your son is the one I am looking for. Is it ok if I give him a legacy?"

The couples' mouths were open in shock.