“Insolent mongrel.”
Instead of answering, Li Mu attacked by way of responding.
Whoosh!
A searing-white energy scythe fired by Li Mu with his saber streaked towards the burgundy horse carriage, blasting aside all the cold mists that surrounded the vicinity of the pond.
“Hmph, very well. Let’s see how well can the Creed of Divinity’s most-prized prodigy acquit himself in battle! Windslicer, fire!”
With a deep grunt, a pair of jet-black energy quarrels speared out from inside the carriage, screaming through the air.
The first quarrel headed straight for the energy scythe Li Mu fired.
The next homed in on another target: Li Mu himself.
All of a sudden, in a perfect demonstration of the unpredictable nature of the Cloudwater-styled saber discipline, from within Li Mu’s energy scythe broke out a twin that smashed into the second dark energy quarrel, reducing it into dregs that dissipated like smoke. But Li Mu’s energy scythes remained pristine, their strength unimpaired even after defeating the black energy quarrels. Then, much to everyone’s surprise, the two energy scythes each further split into two more scythes. All four scythe-like energy missiles arced towards the carriage, sending the fyresteeds whinnying in fright as they bolted away in panic.
The volley of energy scythes dove straight at the carriage like a pack of ravenous wolves, eliciting an explosion of force and splinters of timber, but not before a dark figure banged his way out of the top of the carriage in a crude fashion and escaped to safety.
The dark hooded figure hovered in mid-air, suspended for one brief split-second, then he split into eight copies of himself. Which of them was real, no one could tell, for they looked exactly alike. As one, they threw themselves forward at Li Mu, each of the tip of their swords aimed at his head. But that was not all, from the tips of the swords burst forth fountains of white-silvery death rays each sparkling like quicksilver, filling the sky with an uproarious but chaotic display of white-hued streaks that scattered around wildly before dashing straight at Li Mu.
“Impressive.”
Li Mu thought dryly, his head nodding imperceptibly curtly. He did not move away from his position, but his hand groped for his saber and he ripped it out of its sheath with a quick and deadly swish.
First swing.
Then a second.
Then a third!
In just one transitory moment, Li Mu unleashed eight swings with speeds that no naked eye could see.
The eight blows each elicited an energy bolt that shot away as if they had been fired simultaneously.
That was another one of the Creed’s special combat techniques: Sundering Clouds
Li Mu had been studying the saber disciplines of the Creed of Divinity to great depths. Having been something of a skillful practitioner in the disciplines of saber combat himself in his former life made the task easier for him. All eight energy bolts each fixated on one of the dark hooded man’s doppelgangers, blasting every one of them into confetti-like bits and pieces.
Whoosh!
An energy bolt fired from a sword came howling from over Li Mu’s shoulder. As black as a black adder, it speared through the air with every semblance of the vicious serpent it paralleled.
Then Li Mu saw it. At the other end of the ebony death bolt was this conspicuous hooked nose on a young face twisting with loathing and rancor.
The eight doppelgangers were just a distraction and this was the real attack meant to put him down once and for all.
Even that was not enough to make Li Mu move. He switched the grasp of his weapon into a backhand grip and swung hard again. The sharp edge of his blade gnashed savagely against the tip of the death bolt. It was gone, replaced with real steel — his enemy’s sword.
Clank!
Both weapons of steel parted after their first collision and a stillness ensued for one brief beat.
Then came the storm. Both steels clashed and gnawed at each other in a furious frenzy of saber and sword hacking and grinding against each other, striking and bouncing away before clashing again, engendering a deluge of sparks and energy dregs like a blacksmith hammering on a piece of iron.
The duel did not last long before both men detached from each other.
Li Mu had not moved an inch at all.
But the dark-hooded young man staggered backward for more than seven or eight paces before he could finally regain his balance.
“It seems that the rumors are true after all, Li Zhiyuan. You really have ascended beyond your former strength. Impressive skills too. No wonder you’re hailed as the best prodigy the Creed of Divinity has ever had in years and one of the ten best wunderkinds of the Northern Steppes. Bravo.”
On the face laced with anger and loathing hints of shock and madness suddenly sprang out.
“Shame that you only discovered it too late,” Li Mu added drolly.
“Heh heh heh heh, I wonder. You might be good enough to best me in a fight, but I doubt you have what it takes to keep me here. Getting a measure of your strength now is enough for me today and we shall meet again soon. I shall put a permanent end to you then,” said Hooked-nose with the same wicked look that all murderers and cutthroats have.
“Ignorant fool.”
Li Mu muttered under his breath as he slid his saber back into its sheath.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Blood began pouring to the ground all of a sudden.
Gaping lacerations began to split open everywhere on Hooked-nose’s otherwise unharmed and uninjured body, erupting in geysers of red viscous slop that immediately soaked his dark cloak wet.
“What in Heaven’s name is going on?! How…” Hook-nosed gasped. He looked down at himself and saw the wounds that were beginning to show. “H-How?! Why did I not notice that I had been hit with so many blows!? You just stood there and nothing happened!”
He stared at Li Mu, livid with fear and panic.
“No, wait! You’re not Class VII, you’re Class VIII, aren’t you!? You ascended two Classes?! How’s that possible?!”
Only now did the real truth about Li Mu’s strength occur to him.
Li Mu must be Class VIII, or there was no other way that he did not even see how was he attacked. That was the only possible explanation.
But Li Mu just stood there, reticent and silent.
He had been there long enough to hear the full conversation between Dongfang Qinghong and Hooked-nose that told him that he did not need to show any mercy to wicked scum like the latter.
“Heh, so this is how it has played out, Li Zhiyuan… Very well…”
Pop!
Before Hooked-nose could even finish, he collapsed in one last spurt of blood that ultimately took his life, crashing to the ground in a spread eagle position.
Li Mu turned around to look at the still-bewildered Dongfang Qinghong and her two shivering handmaidens. He sighed at the sight of the Vestal of the White Lotus. There were questions that he needed answers to but the look on her face was enough to dissuade him from asking her.
He strode towards the dead body of Hooked-nose and examined it, finding nothing remarkable except for an arrowhead-shaped token furnished from an unknown type of metal that weights almost as heavily as obsidian. That appeared to be the only item of note on the corpse.
“Whoever or whatever you are, if it’s the Creed you’re after, then I’ll deal with each and every one of you root and stem.”
After making sure that he had not missed anything vital from the search of the corpse, Li Mu stowed away the token and spun around to leave.
“Don’t you want to know where he’s from?” Dongfang Qinghong, the Vestal of the White Lotus, cried after him.
“As if I care,” Li Mu muttered without stopping at all, “He raised his sword against me. That’s reason enough for me to cut him down.”
With just one flicker of his figure.
He was gone.
Dongfang Qinghong stood there, staring at the mountain path from whence he vanished with myriads of emotions swelling inside her.
“He’s changed.
“Utterly changed.
“And that’s not just his strength.”
Compared to the proud and suave Li Zhiyuan she once knew, the new Li Zhiyuan appeared stolid. Stoic and indescribably confident — to the point of hubris, she might add — which was completely foreign to her.
“We should go, my lady,” urged one of her handmaidens.
Dongfang Qinghong calmed down, her visage once again returning to her usually the composed and impassive demeanor.
“You will gonna have to pay the price to survive, Li Zhiyuan. Our paths might part from this day hence, but I wish that you would still be as sure and steadfast as you are today the next time we meet.”
On that note, she left the place with her two handmaidens in tow.
…
The following day.
Armed with only his saber, Li Mu decided to embark on a trip riding on the fyresteed he took from Hooked-nose the day before.
He left Fang Mei and Fang Yuan at the stronghold to study. At his behest, the two young children were given the best attention and care. Finally, after so many years of perseverance, they were finally given the finest education in warriorship the Creed could offer.
In the meantime, this mission that Li Mu embarked on was both important and compulsory.
It was imperative that he restored justice for the old Li Zhiyuan.
He would ride north for Rydorburg, the mecca of warriorship in the Northern Steppes. That was where Li Zhiyuan fell and that was where he must begin.
That was the promise he had made to the former incumbent whose body he now occupied.
The first stop of his northbound trip was the Aerie, home of the Aquilas. The Aquilas was a gang and was one of the thirteen factions that conspired with the Priory of the Four Seas months ago in hunting down members of the Creed when they were trying to bring a crippled Li Zhiyuan back to their stronghold after his defeat.
Night fell.
The silvery orb hung bright in a sparsely-studded night sky.
Li Mu finally arrived at the gates of the Aerie with his fyresteed.
There was no need to hurry, so he found a comfortable spot under a pine tree and meditated all night, activating his Xiantian Skill discipline to replenish his natural qi.
Mana might be scarce in the atmosphere of this world, but every bit that he managed to acquire was extremely rich and dense, especially since the successful activation of the entirety of the Xiantian Skill discipline here in this world afforded him many benefits that he did not enjoy in his former life. If there was anything to gripe and complain about, that would be the strange inexplicable reason that his Third Eye wasn’t working here, despite all twelve stages of the Xiantian Skill discipline working so smoothly.
Dawn replaced the night with the red yolk of the sun climbing up the eastern sky.
Li Mu found someone which he paid to have a broken sword sent into the Aquilas’ stronghold.
It was the Sword of Divinity, the personal weapon that belonged to the former Grand Master of his order. When he was killed, the Creed failed to recover his body. Then one day, the broken sword was delivered back to the stronghold. It was sent by their enemies — those who were trying to decimate the Creed and terminate Li Zhiyuan — and the broken was to shatter that remaining confidence the Creed still held on to and humiliate them.
And now, he was sending the sword to the Aerie to announce his arrival.
So began his path of vengeance.
It wasn’t long before the Aerie began ringing its bells to mark its call to arms.
Casual and slack at first, the defenses of the Aerie immediately became tense and anxious as if they were expecting a full invasion. Archers were deployed over the crenellations of the walls and the number of sentinels was doubled. All four gates were quickly slammed shut with the exception of the southern gate, which was kept to allow Yin Bupo—Lord of the Aerie and master of the Stormhawks, a cadre of Yin Bupo’s best eighteen men—to ride out to sortie with the Stormhawks.
“Li Zhiyuan? Did you come alone? Word has it that you’ve recovered. You should be cowering at the Creed’s stronghold and live out your days with peace instead of coming here and seeking your own death, fool.”
Yin Bupo was rather smug and confident to see that Li Mu came alone instead of an army.
“You’re a dead man the moment you chose to darken my doors.
It’s time to send you off.
I can still remember how thrilling it was hunting down your brothers and killing your Grand Master.
Impudent and silly fool.”
The Stormhawks all broke into proud and haughty guffaws.
“Ironhawk, Golden Hawk, Red Hawk, Purple Hawk… you’re all here. Good. Twelve of your number here were complicit in the slaughter of my brothers, including you, Yin Bupo you old fowl. Very good. Today, you shall meet your maker.”
That was all Li Mu had to say. From the back of the fyresteed, he kicked and soared up into the sky, yanking out his saber as he rose and unleashed the Sundering Clouds technique. Scythe-like energy bolts filled the sky like snowflakes falling in a blizzard, rolling towards Yin Bupo and the Stormhawks in a wave of death.
“ARRGGHH!”
“My leg!”
Agonizing peals of howls and screams chorused amid what was a deluge of blood and flesh when Li Mu’s attack struck its targets.
Everywhere the wave of scythes rumbled past, Stormhawks—Gold Hawk, Purple Hawk, Bronze Hawk, and Iron Hawk—were all being swept into a sandstorm like helpless blades of grass being tossed about in the winds before the sandstorm turned into a tornado of whirling blood and viscera where the Stormhawks were quite literally shredded before they could even unsheathe their weapons.
“Get back! We need to get back!”
Aghast with the horror of the terrible fate that befell his men, the Lord of the Aerie cried the order to retreat.
“Li Zhiyuan’s strength and power are well beyond what everyone’s guesses! This is a mistake!”
But Li Mu was not in the mood for mercy.
He took into the air once again and fired another scythe-like blow with his saber. The projectile wheezed through the air like a swift arrow.
It found its mark and lopped off Yin Bupo’s head, the appendage plopping lifelessly to the ground with a morbid thud.
“YOU’LL ALL DIE HERE!”
There was no quarter given, there was no compassion. Only the dispassionate need to dispense justice.
In his wake, Li Zhiyuan left the Stormhawks utterly slaughtered with every one of them lying on the ground by the end, dead and headless.
Clang!
His saber slid back into its sheathe.
Li Mu landed on the back of his fyresteed and settled himself on its saddle.
Whinny!
Li Mu rode into the wind with his fyresteed neighing triumphantly and dashed through the southern gate of the Aerie, where he had the heads of Yin Bupo and the Stormhawks hung from the top of the portcullis before he went on a rampage, butchering every foe who would dare stand in his way to collect the broken Sword of Divinity. As a finishing touch, he left the words sprawled upon the northern gate: We Do Not Forget. Then he left.
Word of the massacre blazed through the realm of warriors quickly like bushfire.
By the time Li Mu reached his next stop, the stronghold of the Brotherhood of the Cardinal Points, virtually everyone in the world of warriors knew about what was dubbed the Massacre of the Aerie.
Hence, when Master Chief of the Brotherhood Mo Silang received the broken Sword of Divinity brought to him by some unknown messenger to the stronghold, he immediately mustered every able man under his command and sent word to garner aid from any friends and allies, gathering up to two hundred and fifty-one men to man the defenses and waited for Li Mu to come.
But all the help Mo Silang found could do little against the man in white who rode upon a fyresteed. One battle was all it took to shatter the honor of the Brotherhood, whose influence stretched as far as hundreds of miles and reduce it into tatters.
Once again, Li Mu left the same message: We Do Not Forget.
He continued his vengeful crusade northwards.
Everywhere he stopped, he would leave behind a trail of death and blood.
That was how his new moniker began: the Aspect of Vengeance, the one man whose ride north struck fear and trepidation in anyone who had once slighted him.
