Being Hunted

Ryu continued to perfect the Wind Chasing Foot Technique and he kept being beaten till he was totally exhausted.

After being exhausted Ryu jumped out of the arena and the puppets immediately moved back to their first position before Ryu entered the arena and becomes immobile again. Ryu dragged his bruised body away and recuperate, immediately after recuperating he jumped back inside the arena and started training again, Ryu continued like this, after a while he would jump out of the arena, recuperate and immediately return to the arena, continue this till he reached entry in the skill, that was when he stopped and he moved out of the chamber.

When Ryu moved out of the chamber he saw lyan and Arnt waiting for him outside the chamber, they anxiously walked towards him.

"What have you been doing inside the chamber for 7 days, you didn't even come out, "lyan asked Ryu

"I'm training of course, and I have reached the entry level of the Wind chasing foot technique, within those 7 days and also gained some fighting experience too"Ryu answered.

Lyan was surprised by Ryu's feat but he has learned not to act so surprised when Ryu does something impossible as he was numb to ryu feats, it was only Arnt that exclaimed and said

"What... nonsense, you just used 7 days to master the entry-level in wind chasing Foot Technique, it's laughable, do you know that the Technique is a high-grade black cultivation skill and it's even impossible to master it even for 5 months but you only used 7 days it's absurd, I don't believe you," Arnt said and turned to lyan, he was immediately surprised when he saw the expression in lyan which is of nonchalance as though lyan wasn't surprised but he didn't act surprised anymore because he was numbed by Ryu.

"Master, you are not surprised, "Arnt asked probing lyan.

"Well I am but just didn't show it as I'm numbed by surprises from this boy, so calm down you will soon get used to it too,"lyan said as a matter of fact.

Arnt mouth is agape at lyan words.

When Arnt was surprised, Ryu turned his back to face the palace and wave his hand

'whoosh' the palace shrunk and disappeared into Ryu's body, he said

"Now I'm ready to move out everything is set and well prepared, Arnt ready yourself and master, are you staying in the palace or here"Ryu said and asked the duo.

"Of course, I'm staying inside the palace, I can't survive long enough outside the palace so I will have to follow you, and besides you won't want to leave only me there right?"lyan said asking Ryu"

Ryu nodded and take back out the palace which lyan entered Ryu kept back the Palace and Arnt merged back with Ryu

The bell has already merged with Ryu since he returned from killing the assassins and as Arnt is the spirit of the bell he also has to merge back with Ryu.

After everything is ready, Ryu moved out of the cave and hop to use his fingers to hook the wall of the ravine while continuously hopping till he reached the top of the ravine.

Ryu get out of the ravine and looked back to the ravine, it is in this ravine that my destiny changed or I would have been killed by the assassins, Ryu thought and looked away while moving toward the direction of the harbor where ships are to travel from one continent to another.

Ryu continued moving and sometimes hunt the magical beast to perfect his skills, this was suggested by lyan as even though lyan was in the palace he can see everything outside.

When Ryu was moving, suddenly a beast with a fire horn jumped out of the forest and immediately attacked Ryu, who jumped up to avoid the beast.

The beast is a horned fire rhino, it has extreme body strength and it's also a fire element beast, so it is compact for both fighting long and short ranges.

Ryu was quite lucky because he was already vigilant before and was warned by Arnt immediately after he found out so he had enough time to jump away or he would have been badly injured.

Ryu was angry when he saw that he was almost injured just now, by a beast ambushing him, he hasn't even gone and hunted the beast but did a beast want to hunt him?

After jumping back Ryu furiously circulate his worldly fist canon techniques and punched forward toward the rhino as a big illusionary body of a fist collided with the rhino's head who grunted in pain and moved back, even though the Rhino was injured it was just physical and the rhino was still in a good condition, the rhino rushed toward Ryu and used his horned to attack Ryu who brings is palm forward to collide with the Rhino's horn and bounced back.

When Ryu bounced back he looked at his palm which is now burnt after touching the rhino horn.

When Ryu saw this he was furious and said

"I think it's time to finish this, the commotion would have alerted other people in this forest and as herbs pickers are always here I should use my full strength to kill this beast to avoid any other people seeing me here, "Ryu said and activate the Wind Chasing Foot Technique which instantly brought Ryu to the rhino and he used his full powered blow to punch at the back of the head of the Rhino.

"Booom...." the punch landed and the rhino fell to the ground dead,' this rhino is slow I think, yeah it makes sense as it was both good in long range and short ranged fight so it wasn't bestowed with speed, or it would have been too overpowered ' Ryu thought and touch the body of the rhino to move it inside the save.

After keeping the body of the rhino, Ryu moved away from the scenes to avoid anybody meeting him there.

After he had moved quite a distance he said "hmm... fighting the rhino is quite exhausting, my qi is almost exhausted from hunting and Fighting also, I should cook the rhino to replenish my strength and satiate my hunger" he said and gathered woods from the forest, light it with his fire qi and started roasting the Rhino.

When Ryu was coming he had prepared everything he needed but as he can't go to the market to buy anything, so he didn't have any seasoning except some he found from the assassins he killed, he added the seasoning and started rolling the Rhino on the fire.

After some time, a bit from 30 minutes the meat is roasted so Ryu digs in and started eating.

The moment he put the meat in his mouth he cried out "hmmm... delicious..hmmm" Ryu started munching on the meat and discovered it was quite delicious, 'I'm quite good at this too' Ryu thought inwardly while he continues to munch the meat.

Ryu shouldn't have known how to cook but since he and his mother were being chased for 2 years in the forest they have to cook for themselves, so Ryu got to help his mother sometimes where he learned how to cook, so his skills are excellent now as his mother is good in Cooking when Ryu thought about his mother he was a little sad and assure himself that he must quickly safe his mother and he continued eating.

While Ryu was busy enjoying his meat he didn't notice that danger his rapidly approaching him from a distance.

Earlier when Ryu and the rhino were fighting they attracted the attention of a squad that is part of the army of the imperial palace of the sky firebird kingdom, they split to cover more ground in finding Ryu so when they noticed a disturbance, they hurriedly moved there.

When the squad get there they see the mark of the fight between Ryu and the rhino and one of them said

"Captain I think there was a fight between a beast and a human here and I think the human used fist art like the one at the assassin's stronghold"

The one that talked was the tracker among the squad, one tracker was put in each of the squad so they can find Ryu more efficiently, so the man quickly figure out the mark from the available details as it is his job.

"Okay let's track the person and check if it is the person the emperor wants," the captain said while unrolling a paper containing a picture which is of course of Ryu as materialized by the emperor to the general, this picture of Ryu was looked a little young than he is now but someone can still make out the features of Ryu from it.

"B- But the general said that when we figure a clue about the person we should immediately contact him as the person is quite strong" the tracker man stuttered a little scared, he had seen the tragic scene of how Ryu tortured the assassins and the burnt ash on the ground which indicates that they were burnt by Ryu so he was a little scared.

"What..are you scared? What are you scared of, it's just one person and we got a full squad of 17 people here excluding you as you are not a soldier, so relax we will be fine besides if we can get the person to the emperor did you know how hefty our reward will be...hmm.. so just lead us to him and we will take care of the rest and you too will be rewarded as we will mention you, right men?" the captain of the squad said with eye shinning and when he got to the end of his sentence, his eyes shined with a cold light thinking 'you won't even be alive by then as we will kill you by then'.

All the soldiers nodded but they were also thinking the same as their captain as they know he was quite greedy and vicious, and so are they.

The tracker also thinks 'since you haven't seen what I saw how would you understand me, greedy fool, but I don't have any choice as he will still force, I can only pray that this squad is enough to capture that man' but outside the tracker man said with a flattering and praising expression

"All of you are righteous, I'm impressed," he said and bowed while cupping his fist to the captain and the squad.

"Yeah..yeah we know, so quickly lead us to this prey, we are going on our quest to get rich after capturing this fat meat" the captain urged the man who nodded and get to work while bending to check Ryu's trails.

After a while when the soldiers are getting impatient, they don't want another squad to steal their prey, the man said quickly

"I have gotten the trails, follow me "the tracker man has sweat on his forehead from the impatient and angry aura of the soldiers, he leads the way and the soldiers followed him deep into the forest in exactly the path Ryu took.

.....

Back to Ryu, he was still eating the meat, he is munching on the meat loudly, it can be seen from his manners how hungry Ryu was, while eating he was humming unaware of the imminent danger.

...

"Booooom" A big body of a fluffy animal made a booming sound on the ground inside a forest as it was killed quite brutally by the killer as if the person was angry with the animals.

"Fuck.... fuck...fuck" the furious voice of the captain of the squad moving towards Ryu was held as he was furious.

When the squad was moving inside the forest, they were ambushed by the black-striped leopard which is a very agile and deadly beast, they were ambushed by it from the back so they were quite disoriented at first by the sudden assault but they later regained their formation and killed the leopard but before that, they have casualties as 3 of the soldiers were killed and 2 was injured.

"Fuck.. did this fluffy beast want to screw me?! Am on a quest that can change my life but was disturbed by this animal" the captain asked while kicking the dead body of the leopard, it was unknown who he was asking, whether himself, the squad, or the dead leopard.

"Quickly recuperate so we can be the one to catch that boy or another squad will steal our prey and you continue to track further so that after we recuperate, we will quickly be able to catch the boy"the captain ordered while glaring at the tracker man as if he was the one responsible for their predicament.

The tracker quickly scurried away and continue tracking

A while later after the 3 dead soldiers were buried and the 2 injured ones recovered a little they continued moving towards Ryu to continue their 'quest'.