Unfathomable Senior

Hunter point of view :

Cheng Yun was a member of the Tatar Tribe, he just reached the age of 15. This was a special occasion in his tribe, at this age you were considered an adult and you had to start real work for your tribe. The males were obligated to hunt or if they weren’t cut out for that gather food or take care of the livestock. Most of them preferred hunting though, it was the most honorable type of work in the tribe, hunting down beasts and protecting your family was an honor for these people.

The men from the tribe formed smaller hunting parties of five people, this was his first time out in the deep forest , children were forbidden in going in too deep as dangers lurked at every corner. Lately the creatures in the forest became more and more unruly as his fellow tribesmen came back injured more and more, even a few deaths happened. They reported about how the beasts were acting strange, eyes going red while they lost their mind, they charged at the humans and other beasts without any sense of self, just throwing at anything that moved and ripping it apart, they even went after their own kin from time to time.

Though the village he was part of couldn’t support themselves on only farmed food and gathered fruits and vegetables from the forest, they needed meat dense in calories and also Qi. After a mortal began their cultivation and went their first step into the Qi Condensation stage, even if it was the lowest one they started to need food high in spiritual Qi, the stronger the person became the more they needed, there were all kind of spirit foods around but they were hard to produce out in a small village as they had , the seeds were hard to come by and you needed special qi rich soil to grow them, so the best way to circumvent that was hunting what most people called spirit beasts.

A spirit beast of the same cultivation as a human mostly came out on top, because of the larger size but it was possible to win. That was why they formed small or large hunting parties to hunt, mostly targeting the herbivore types of creatures as they weren’t as ferocious attitude like the carnivores and were less craft than the omnivores. But lately the beasts started acting up, getting violent and attacking people that were clearly of a higher caliber then them. The people didn’t know what was driving them crazy but they would have to get to the bottom of this if they didn’t want to have a hard winter without any stored meat.

They managed to find a nice adult Serpent Tailed Deer, it would bring quite a lot of meat for the people in the tribe, he was more or less in a support role on this hunt, using his bow skills that he was quite proud of as he was the best at his age group. He managed to hit the beast in a couple of spots but the damage wasn’t that great, but after a while it added up and with the help of the more experienced hunters they managed to bring the spirit beast down without any loses on their part.

He was in charge of the field dressing, meaning it was the removal the animal’s internal organs, also known as the entrails, which was necessary to preserve its meat. While he was doing the dirty work the others used their time to pluck out any arrows from the deer and any that they could salvage from the vicinity. They fished out the core and were ready to move, they didn’t want to wait that much and the smell of blood would probably attract the other beasts. They were quite unlucky though as a pack of crimson wolves suddenly appeared around them.

The cultivation levels of the tribe members wasn’t all that high, the highest was at the Qi Condensation 6th level, they were poor and it was hard to cultivate without any resources. The condensation stage ranged from 1 to 12 but every three levels you would reach a bottleneck, so between the 3/4, 6/7, 9/10 stages and then at the 12 stage the biggest one as you had to form your foundation. Every bottleneck was harder than the last one, so without resources being them guidance from a seasoned master, spirit herbs, cultivation manuals it was impossible to advance.

The wolves were between the 4th and 6th levels, but there were over a dozen of them and they were only five. This was quite the predicament as the only option was to flee, they didn’t stand a chance against those beasts that also didn’t care much for their own safety and didn’t feel any pain when attacked. They abandoned the deer in the hopes that the wolves would go for it and started backing away, but they just howled and looked at them with a ferocious glint in their eyes, more interested in the moving humans than the ready to devour dead beast in front of them.

The hunters fired off a couple of arrows that did some surface damage and then bolted out of there with haste as the chase started, they knew the forest quite well so even though the wolves would be faster then them in an open field as they run through the the forest while having to go through bushes and trees they could somehow flee. Though that was the case for the four experienced older hunters, the boy was panicking and tripped over a root which sealed his fate. He soon felt sharp teeth going into his thigh as one of the red beasts caught up to him as he was trying to get up. The pain was unbearable and he screamed, his fellow tribesmen looked at him in fear but they knew that the couldn’t do much for the youth.

But at this moment something strange happened, as another wolf was about to go for a neck bite while the other one was chewing the kids thigh a sudden explosion happened kicking up dust and debris into the area. The hunters covered their eyes as the smoke flew into their eyes trying to make out what was going on, was it another horrendous beast that came to wreck more chaos? But to their surprise after the dust had cleared they could see a huge sword in the spot that the charging wolf was in, sliced in half. They saw a man standing on the hilt of the large sword, hands behind his back and standing straight up with an otherworldly aura to him

He looked like an immortal in that pure white robe, the top of his face was covered with his robe and his back was facing the four hunters while the scared bitten boy was a couple of meters from the huge sword. They could see lightning crackling from him as he looked at the crimson wolf that was next to the boy, it wasn’t biting his leg anymore as it growled and flung itself at the new enemy only to be bisected by a strange glowing sword that the stranger formed in his hand.

If they could they would have cheered on but they were too shocked to say anything and just gulped while watching as all the wolves charged at the robust looking cultivator. They stood no chance as with every swipe of his light sword a beast fell. Soon they were all dead in a gory puddle around the white robed man. He stood there for a moment as he looked at the slain monsters and then looked down at the youth that was still in need of medical attention.

Cheng Yun looked up while grasping his leg, he was bleeding out as the wolf had mangled up his artery. He would probably die soon if nothing was done. Then he heard the man speak, he had a domineering voice. “Here, eat this.” He placed a pill in his mouth which the boy swallowed with haste. After the pill went down his throat he could feel it’s healing properties getting released and his leg started patching itself up at a visible rate and within a minute it was all healed up, he could even stand up while looking at his torn pants and blood that they were soaked in.

The man was also surprised about the healing speed, though the boy and hunters didn’t see that as he was hiding his face behind his hood…