Nine Paths of Asura-Original Wuxia

Chapter 53- Rumble In The Jungle

"Undead can't smell at such a low level kiddo, it should just be a coincidence!" Mei advised Lineir, but she sounded skeptical, 

"Why is it looking this way though...?"

As he watched, the undead seemed to raise its head and soundlessly sniff again, before looking away. Lineir relaxed a little.

"Just a coincidence... what?!!!"

Before his eye's the undead seemed to track in an unnaturally smooth motion at the tree he was in, before turning up 90 degrees again and staring directly at Lineir, who hadn't made a sound.

"What was it looking at... unless...!" He shivered as a chill ran down his spine. He looked at where the skeleton had been looking before and resisted the urge to break out into a run. The skeleton hadn't made a move yet but its actions were enough to scare him already.

"It looked exactly at the spot where I jumped off the last tree, it knows I'm here!" Lineir was intensely disturbed. While he was much stronger than before, when he had been helpless against even the weakest undead, this ones actions were simply too strange! Who had ever heard of an undead that could smell and track where he had been like a bloodhound! This was too much. Before his horrified eyes, the skeleton who's eyes seemed to lock on directly into his, and it raised its free hand and pointed directly at him, the index finger seemed to pronounce an ungodly weight, far beyond the actions of a mere construct of rotting flesh. There was something behind its empty eye sockets, something far more terrifying which guided its hand. Lineir slowly let his bone scythes ease out. Suddenly...an explosion of movement!

CHA CHA!

The skeleton went from standing still to running full out at Lineir's location with its huge sword in an instant. Its feet slammed into the ground and it soundlessly raised its head and seemed to be issuing a silent howl! Even though there was no noise, no air, Lineir's every hair stood up, this thing was not stupid, it was intelligent, like a rabid animal. His undead heart throbbed slightly along with his bone scythes, a slight ache passing through as if they were resonating with this silent howl. He was unable to dodge in time, he had vastly underestimated its speed! Stuck in the tree, it was as Mei said, he was simply a target.

"**** fine, a fight is what you want, a fight is what you'll get!"

 Crossing his arms, he blocked the blow with his bone scythes. The heavy sword carried an incredible weight on it, far more than Lineir was comfortable with. Fortunately however, before Lineir's cultivation, he still only felt threatened, but not overwhelmed. The blade was caught between his bone scythes, and he shifted one arm so the force was channeled down to his left side, then suddenly, his empty right hand materialized the black sword, and struck out, a trap which any normal human would have trouble reacting to after being put off balance by his parry.

 The undead was indeed no exception, seemingly staggering to the side, and the black blade swept through with the power of darkness and smashed its rib cage from the side, easily shattering it into pieces. Calm, now that the threat had been eliminated, Lineir immediately jumped back a few meters, and observed.

"Kiddo! The death Qi is not decreasing!" Mei's warning came as Lineir frowned, his sixth sense seeming to feel danger.

Before his eyes, the shattered fragments of blackened rotting bone and meat shook, and then began to rejoin. The upper body quickly reformed as the hands, bound by faint hazy strands of death Qi crawled back to the body and reinserted themselves.

"Hmph, you think you can reform right in front of me!" Lineir's eyes turned cold. Like he would let a downed enemy recover without dealing the finishing blow. He leapt forward, just barely leaving the ground, but with such strength and speed that he covered the meters between them before landing, and as he passed over the skeleton, he slashed downwards with a bizzare spark of bluish-yellow lightning passing between his blade and the reforming undead.

"Reverse Lightning Slash!"

The undead body was shattered into bits by his darkness infused sword again, but this time, before the pieces were blown apart, small strands of lightning surged between them and criss-crossed like sown thread creating a web.

"Lightning Rebound!"

Chi Chi Chi

As Lineir landed past, he turned and watched as the strands of lightning snapped and the pieces exploded. The smell of burnt rot filled the air.

"If you want to come back to life, you had better come back as a ghost because there is no corpse for you now, undead!" Lineir smiled, that was the first time he had gotten to test his new move on something besides a golem. It was extremely effective against undead apparently, he was quite satisfied with the results.

"Nice work kiddo, the death Qi in the immediate vicinity  has dissipated, but the environment still has a whole lot more than it should. I doubt this is the only strange thing in this jungle, I'd suggest getting out of here before something else notices." Lineir hopped into a nearby tree.

"Yea... no more traveling on the ground, that thing seemed to be able to follow where I've been, I think it would be safer to travel in the treetops." Quickly, he began to jump from tree to tree.

Unbeknownst to Lineir, a few minutes after he left, behind him, another skeleton, carrying a mace, came upon the scene of his fight. Pausing over where the first skeleton had been destroyed, it sniffed, and then pointed a finger into the air through the dense tree coverage. Raising its head in a soundless growl, it ran forward... it was pointing directly at Lineir!