Nine Paths of Asura-Original Wuxia

Chapter 45 - Strange Happenings

After the cry had long since faded into the distance, Lineir relaxed and Mei began to instruct him again

"Alright, you can be said to have learned the basics of movement. The rest is practice." Mei said after Lineir wandered through another group of golems.

"Your feeling is quite good, but these are inanimate enemies, they lack true intelligence. You will see that fighting people is tougher. But you have the feeling, that is the important part, with that, you can walk anywhere with enough time. Now it's time for me to teach you the technique you will be using."

Lineir burst out at this statement,

"Wait, you're telling me that all that wasn't even the actual technique? What was that all for then!" Mei simply chuckled,

"Of course that wasn't the actual technique, what part of that looked like it did damage to you? No, I was simply teaching you how to walk. But don't worry, the actual technique is easy, the most important fundamental for any swordsman is footwork, you must get to the enemy to fight them. Now that you know, I can teach you what strike to use. First of all, gather the darkness element inside of the sword, as much as you can. Focus on the image of volume, you want as much as possible!"

Lineir mumbled as he concentrated, 

"Volume... volume... ok, this is as much as I can hold!"

Lineir gathered a large amount of darkness inside the blade, it began to seem to suck the light out of the surrounding atmosphere. Mei then commanded,

"Good, not a bad amount for your first go, now in the center of this darkness, gather as much of the lightning element as possible. However, the image you need to focus on is not volume, but density! You are aiming for maximum density, the lightning energy must be compressed to the smallest possible! Do not let go of the darkness element, you must hold it and simultaneously form the lightning inside!"

Lineir began to sweat and his arms shook as his veins bulged. The amount of concentration this took was immense. As he was about to be unable to hold it anymore, Mei cried out,

"Slash the ground, release control of the energy and run away!"

Lineir hesitated a moment then did as she said, he slashed the ground, simultaneously releasing the pent up darkness and lightning energies inside, and then bounded away.

"Watch closely kiddo!" Lineir turned over his shoulder and looked. At the spot he slashed in the ground, a shallow cut was made in the rock. For a second, there was nothing, and then with a loud kang noise, a bolt of lightning surged from the ground to his sword. In doing so, the resulting explosion increased the size of the damage to the ground threefold!

"Heavens, what was that, lightning jumped from the spot I hit to the sword! And there was a delay?"

Mei smugly answered,

"Yes disciple, but this is still incomplete, this first stroke was imperfect and wasteful. You must refine this technique more. When you are done, you will be able to slaughter both vast armies and the largest of foes with the same move!"

Lineir began to train this technique whenever he could muster the energy. If he ran into a group of golems, he would use them as practice dummies and then consume their cores to return to full strength! It was an incredibly wasteful practice, but since Lineir did not want to advance the level of his cultivation too quickly anyways, it was perfect. Even the largest of golems posed little threat to Lineir now. Of course, he was getting worried. The number of obsidian golems was growing. About half of any group was composed of them now, and he couldn't stun them, only avoid them. Furthermore, he was worried about the blue golem he had seen. He still didn't know what it did, and while he hadn't seen any more yet, he was sure they would show up. His strategy was simple, take out the silver golems, and ignore the obsidian golems, then continue on his way. The obsidian golems were simply too large for him to take on without stunning them. Even his devour ability could not penetrate the armor around their core anymore.

In this way, Lineir traversed all the way up the first 10% of the pillar. From here, the pillar sharply elevated a bit and then curled around. In essence, it was the second level! However, while Lineir was the first to reach the second level, his time alone was soon to come to an end. A few days after going up, multi colored robed figures of every color began to shoot by above him! The Patriarchs and elders of each sect had arrived! They shot by, enveloped by the Qi auras of various forbidden artifacts and techniques. Several of the elders were literally burning their cultivation bases to ascend the pillar faster! It was a mad race to the top, and they didn't pay any attention to Lineir below, they were too busy watching each other. Every couple hours, another group would fly by, and Lineir would stop for a moment to watch. After a day or two, no more came, and Lineir was alone again for a little bit. But then the thing he had been dreading happened,

GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWR

He cursed and stopped practicing his technique. Immediately accelerating to full speed, he went and hid below a craggy overpass.

"She's still following me?! Sigh, I definitely cannot let her see me this time. With my luck she'll smell me anyway though..." From the sky, the overbearing gliding shadow swept by and then was gone. It was much darker than last time, evidently she was flying much lower than before.

"Huh? She didn't notice me. I'm safe?" He cautiously poked his head out, wary for some trick. Perhaps she was simply circling around and was preparing to ambush him when his guard was down! However, he thought it over and got out and started walking again. Soon he was cultivating again and practicing his technique on nearby rocks and trees.

"Hrmph, she's definitely powerful enough to catch me, element of surprise or not, what possible incentive would she have to ambush me, to scare me out of my wits?" Cracks of lightning emanated from his passage, and his path contained the left behind detritus of burnt targets.

Carefully, he made his way, and then something strange happened. The pillar, which had been rock solid the entire time, began to shake.

"An earthquake? To affect something this large, it must be a strong one." The shaking quickly began to pass, and Lineir thought little more of it. However, a few hours later, it began again, and lasted longer.

"Mei, what is this, I'm worried, is this pillar earthquake proof?" Lineir anxiously asked, but Mei simply told him to keep going.

"Relax kiddo, this pillar is clearly beyond the makings of mortals. Anything short of a Heavenlly disaster will not affect it. Furthermore, where are you going to go, it's a long way down!" Lineir took a look over the side, and swallowed. Indeed, it was incredibly far down. The green earth below blurred together at this distant, and individual features couldn't be made out. In the distance, even mountains looked small.

"I hope you're right..." As Lineir walked however, he thought something was off.

"No golems... I wonder what's going on here. Perhaps the sects ahead dealt with it." However, Lineir knew in his heart that that was unlikely. The sect leaders were all flying extremely fast, they would definitely ignore the golems on the ground. But why then were they missing?