The cultivator was panting as he looked on at the big hole in the ground, the damage was immense. He could see water slowly filling up the hole as a river was close by to it. He slowly descended to the ground going to the impact zone, he grasped the only thing that remained of the beast which was its core. He looked at the thing that caused him so much trouble and smiled to himself a bit, he did it, he won. He was a bit happy that he managed to fight the beast, but a bit mad at himself for being such a coward for so long. He gave out a chuckle and then placed the tennis ball-sized core into his storage ring, he should be able to get some nice rewards for it or use it to craft some good stuff.
He looked a bit dirty due to having been battling the monster in the forest, his clothes weren’t super sturdy or anything, but they had some strange self-regeneration ability to them. So with a bit of time they looked brand new, he himself didn’t feel all that great, he didn’t think that he fought well. He used up too much energy and relied on his superior cultivation prowess to win while running away for the first half of the battle. But it was his first fight with someone close to his level, he was happy that he actually managed to win but he had a lot of things to work on.
He popped one of the healing pills into his mouth and felt a refreshing sensation wash over him, he kind of forgot that he even had those in the middle of the fight. Matt could feel that the creature’s evil Qi was subsiding and the forest would go back to how it was previously, the berserk monsters would also vanish without having its host around. He smirked at the number of points that he received for the fight which was a whooping 90k points, he would be able to get the next level of the crafting abode, or maybe some new kick-ass skill.
At this moment he remembered why he even came to this place in the first place. He looked in the direction the scared Tribe members were and hopped onto his flying sword, slowly drifting towards them while the tension from the fight subsides. His legs felt a bit wobbly at the moment , but he didn’t show it the healing pills having refreshed him somehow.
Yang Rong stood up with the help of his buddies and looked in the direction of where the fighting noises were previously coming from, but now it was silent, too silent.
“D-did that man win?”
His cronies looked at him a bit awkwardly when he referred to the Senior that just saved them with ‘that man’ and not with a more honorable title, but they kind of gave up on their master as they knew his character well. Suddenly they heard a strange sound and in the distance, they could see a faint glow that was moving slowly towards them, at first they thought it was some monster again but after a while, they noticed that it was Zhang Dong slowly hovering towards them on his sword. There was a path of broken down tries that he made by kicking the creature away, so he had a clear path towards them.
“Everyone alive?”
The man asked the group that stood up, clasped their hands and took a bow, well everyone besides the kid they were protecting who just did a half-baked bow. This made the others sweat bullets as they didn’t want to anger the person that just slaughtered a huge monster on his own. The cultivator hopped down from his sword and slowly walked over to the silkypants in question, the others already afraid of what was about to happen.
“Hey kid, you should fix that attitude problem, you’ll get yourself killed one day if you continue like that.”
He flicked the youth’s forehead with pointing finger, which with his increased strength left a bruise behind making Yang Rong yelp out.
“Let’s go back to the village, your father and family are worried sick about you.”
The youth moved his head down as the cultivator mentioned his family that was worried about him, they soon moved back towards the village but it would take them a bit to get there plus it was late at night. They abandoned their temporary camp along the way, they had all of their gear in there. They mentioned this to Matt that decided that they should go see if it’s still there, he didn’t really want to fly at a slow pace for the entire night plus he felt tired, more psychologically than physically.
Luckily after a couple of hours, they found the old camping site that was mostly intact, didn’t take the tribesmen to bring it back in order. It wasn’t much but just light tents though. Matt, of course, took up the tent that the kid previously had to himself, so he had to sleep with the rest of his men in the other one. The tension lessened in the morning as they moved on, Matt decided to place all the equipment into his storage ring so that the men could move faster and ordered them to run back to the village with all their might, he wanted to reach it before the day ended.
All of the people were cultivators so they had a lot of stamina, but not that much as they were all in the Qi Condensation stage, ranging from 3 to 6. Surprisingly the beasts didn’t attack them anymore, probably the disappearance of the corrupted one and the Qi that was corrupting the animals and making them violent was the cause of that. Also, the beasts weren’t that stupid, they could feel the overbearing aura of the cultivator in white so they made sure to stay far away from him.
The tribe people collapsed as they were in the close vicinity of the village, other members came to help them as they spotted the whole group. They were surprised and happy that all of them were still alive and breathing, they sometimes didn’t see eye to eye with these silkypants bodyguards. They were of the same tribe though and they still felt a sense of unity.
A huge commotion was then heard as everyone rushed to the town gates, the Chief showed his love to his son by giving him a good punch in the face that broke the kid’s nose and sent him flying into a nearby wall. Matt scratched his neck and smiled a little bit as he saw the father ‘disciplining’ his no good offspring. After Yang Rong went down, he was picked up by some family members and carried away to get some medical help. Yang Shan gave Matt another bow of respect but got waved of too cut that out by the man in question.
“You don’t need to do that, you’ll get some knee disease if you keep kneeling to me every time we see each other…”
The burly man blushed a bit as he knew that he was overdoing it a bit, but he couldn’t give the Senior much for helping his son. They left the town entrance and Matt got a small reward in the form of a feast, then he heard of his manly fighting form as the others started recounting how he had slain the beast. They didn’t see him flee from the thing plus they didn’t see much besides the one time he exchanged a blow with the monster and sent it flying, so they kind of put in a few good words for him making him look like a lofty battle-hardened cultivator that feared no one. After coughing a couple of times as the tribe members were praising him too much, he drunk and watched as the people danced and had a merry good time before he turned in for the day to wind down, it was about to leave this place but he would remember this place fondly. He remembered to return the camping equipment and the tracking medallion before turning in for the night. He had a lot of points to spend tomorrow.