Chapter 12: Xiao Su's first battle
'Too weak, too strong, too lethal, not aggressive, no useful materials.' He Lan thought as she repelled all the monsters and animals she deemed unworthy of Xiao Su's first battle. He Lan walked at the head of the group and used her mental energy to scout for suitable creatures, if they didn't fit, she'd send a mental barb at them; it was the same trick that caused Xiao Ren to experience a chilling pain in his head that night.
'Like brother like sister,' Ye Tai thought while shaking his head and watching any bugs or leaves that approach He Lan gently frost over and fall, leaving her uniform as spotless as when they entered. He glanced at Xiao Su and frowned at her vacant look. Her previous high tension was gone after an hour of walking and she'd long since gotten lost in her own thoughts. "You're really lacking in discipline, you know that?" He told her irritably.
"Ah!" She exclaimed in surprise and looked at Ye Tai in confusion; but her confusion was soon replaced with a grin as she said "Teach me about the forest please," her eyes sparkling with curiosity. She wanted to ask sooner, but was too tense when they entered, and then too lost in her own thoughts later.
"Do I look like a teacher to you!?" Ye Tai scolded her in extreme annoyance before beginning to teach her different aspects of the forest. Ye Tai was an expert when it came to the Stone Forest, he frequently entered to gather materials to help finance his cultivation and he knew many useful pointers. Xiao Su was completely engrossed in his lecture and barely payed attention to anything else.
He Lan wanted Xiao Su to focus completely on the forest, but she knew Ye Tai's lesson would be beneficial and better than one she could give. He Lan visited the forest to train and collect materials, but only rarely as she spent most of her time near Xiao Su. 'Hmm? This one's good,' she thought as she stopped.
"Follow me," She said while picking up the pace. The three maneuvered through the trees and stopped behind one. Soon, a grey two-meter tall giant badger made its way into their view. Xiao Su recognized it as a Boulder Badger because of Ye Tai's teachings. They were a relatively strong monster that was innately talented in the earth attribute. Their blood was in high demand for its hardening effect.
He Lan pointed at the badger that couldn't see them at the angle and said, "Kill it," To Xiao Su.
Xiao Su blinked once and then prepared her spear. They'd entered the forest for this and she could feel her blood boiling in excitement at the prospects of her first real battle. A dark aura surrounded her body as she used Shade Step in preparation to charge the big badger.
"!?" The Badger made a sound and looked towards their direction a moment before a shadowy figure charged out at a fast speed. It Narrowed its eyes and pounced without hesitation. Even the lowest ranking monsters experienced life and death battles. It smashed its clawed paw down towards Xiao Su with the weight of its massive body behind it.
'Fast!' Xiao Su thought in surprise at how fast it reacted. The dark aura surrounding her body concentrated to her legs and trembled at a weird frequency. Her body disappeared and reappeared a couple meters away just as the Paw slammed down and cracked the earth where she was before.
Yellow qi pulsed from the Badger's paw and shook the earth around it, almost throwing Xiao Su off balance, however, the moment the tremors shook her, she reflexively rearranged her body weight to keep stability, much to her own surprise. She aimed for its shoulder and thrust her spear at it, but she'd missed the best timing due to her surprise.
The Badger's eyes glinted as a strong force erupted from its embedded paw, causing an overwhelming strength to propel its huge body into the air.
'No way!' Xiao Su thought in shock as her spear stabbed through empty air.
The Badger wasn't finished; it used the leftover force from the liftoff to twist its body in mid-air and slap at Xiao Su with its other paw.
Its paw was huge, bigger than the head it was aiming for, and the mangled ground was a testament to the power it held.
Fear gripped Xiao Su as her head went completely blank. In face of the life-threatening danger that blew all thoughts to pieces, she removed one hand from her spear and punched the paw using Meteor Fist out of desperate instinct.
A muffled bang sounded out as the two collided and Xiao Su was sent sliding backwards while the Badger landed in an awkward position.
'So this is the fabled explosiveness of beasts,' Xiao Su thought in excitement. Just as the first path for humans is the human path, the first path for beasts is the beast path. The beast path possessed a strong explosiveness to its qi that produced incredible feats of power and speed. She'd read about it, but she never thought it'd be so potent. She'd completely lost the previous exchange. Despite having a two stage higher cultivation, the difference in physique and explosiveness was just too much.
Her fist was bleeding, and her entire arm was numb, but she barely even felt it as her eyes shined with an overwhelming curiosity that submerged her previous fear and panic. 'Interesting! How does it produce so much power with that amount of qi? How is it able to bear it? How fast can it do it? Interesting!' she thought rapidly while making a hungry grin at the Badger.
The Badger trembled at the sight of that grin and quickly charged at Xiao Su. It noticed that its opponent was a couple stages above, but she didn't seem to have combat experience, so it planned to end it fast.
The image of that huge paw flying towards her face flashed through her mind once again and she instinctively used Shade Contractor again to put distance between them. She stabbed her spear into the ground and a disfigured, completely black humanoid figure quickly exited her shadow. The Shadow Skin faced the Badger while, Xiao Su continued to put distance between them.
The Badger made an annoyed sound and smashed the shadow into the ground. Pain sprang up throughout Xiao Su's body but she didn't slow down. Her sensations were connected to the shadow skin, but it was only that. Pain came through loud and clear, but she didn't suffer any injures and pain she can deal with, so she kept moving.
The Badger attempted to chase but it felt its paw was stuck. The shadow was missing pieces of itself and could no longer be recognized as a human shape, but it hung on to the Badger's paw with everything it had left. The badger looked at it in irritation, soon an immense power erupted from the paw and the shadow exploded violently, scattering into the air and dissipating before it could hit the ground.
'Ow, pain pain pain pain pain pain!' Xiao Su thought as her body started twitching uncontrollably from the sensation of being literally torn to shreds. Even for her, that was pushing it, still, it gave her the time she needed. Limbs still spasming, she stabbed her spear into the ground again and released qi into her shadow, but this time, the Shadow Skin took more time to form. The shadow stretched and grew as it slowly shaped itself into a deliberate human form.
The Badger was approaching as fast as it could while screeching, but it was too late. The Shadow stood, forming a shadowy version of Xiao Su. Just like before, this Shadow went to meet the Badger while Xiao Su fell back. The Badger swiped at the Shadow, intending to send it flying so it couldn't grab him, but this time the Shadow evaded the large paw.
Moving right next to the surprised Badger, the Shadow rained a barrage of punches onto its side. The Badger groaned in pain and tried to bash the Shadow with its body, however the Shadow had swiftly evaded backwards and stared down the annoyed beast with raised fists.
The Badger attacked the Shadow savagely, occasionally using its explosiveness for a quick assault, or its earth attribute attacks to crush it, but its attacks were mostly avoided, and it was the one taking blows everywhere. Anytime the shadow did get hit by a glancing blow, it got up and moved immediately afterwards as it didn't feel anything, and any deformities would right themselves after a period.
Meanwhile Xiao Su directed the shadow while watching the fight in fascination. 'Amazing, amazing! As expected, I can't figure it out at all, ow.' She thought excitedly while pain shot through her shoulder. The Badger's skills would all release some earth qi as an unintended signal, but no matter how she tried she couldn't find any tell for the trademark explosiveness of the beast path, this absolutely astounded Xiao Su.
It's not impossible for a human to produce a similar explosive strength, but to do so with no build up, leaking or self-destruction is impossible, even for a body cultivator surpassing the human path. For a low-ranking beast to be able to do it so naturally was really astonishing to Xiao Su, even though she'd read about it.
'The fact that I can't tell is a pain,' she thought while wincing from enduring another hit. As the fight went on the previously stiff shadow became increasingly lucid in its movement, causing the Badger to be unable to land any blows without taking advantage of its explosive property, which in turn caused the Badger to use it more frequently. 'Looks like it's not without flaws though,' she noted, seeing how the Badger's rate of exhaustion grew exponentially when it started relying on its explosive property. 'It's about time,' she thought as she stepped towards the Badger.
Shadow skin made a clone of the user using their shadow as a catalyst. The clone would have a percentage of the user's physical attributes, how high depended on the user's mastery. In general skills had four masteries, Novices could display a skill to forty percent of its abilities, those who are Accomplished can display up to seventy, then expert mastery means all of the skill's might can be displayed, finally Master level means breaking the confines of the skill and having much more freedom in its display, though the core is still the same.
Shadow Skin was Xiao Su's first human ranked skill and the only one she didn't make herself, it was a tough nut to crack but she'd long reached Master level, before her condition became bad. She'd even improved it greatly so that it could display seventy percent of her strength rather than the fifty percent that was previously the skills limits, but even then, it couldn't deal a fatal blow to the Badger.
Unfortunately, Shadow Skin only copies the user's physical attributes, it couldn't use cultivation techniques or qi. Xiao Su practiced numerous body cultivation techniques and, while her experiments devastated her body and left countless hidden dangers, they were not without some positive results. Xiao Su's body was physically stronger than a normal 4th staged cultivator, but if compared to a body cultivator she'd just qualify for the 2nd stage. The Boulder Badger, known for its thickness, had a defense of a 3rd stage body cultivator, the punches from the Shadow that only had seventy percent of a 2nd stage body cultivator was obviously unable to seriously threaten it. If the Badger was one stage higher it would've completely ignored the shadow as an annoying fly buzzing around.
As she approached, Xiao Su wondered what she should have the shadow do. She felt having it disengage was wasteful, since it was already out, but she was worried that the Badger would blow it up if she made the shadow grab it and, though it was in her tolerance range, that pain wasn't something she wanted to feel again.
In her thoughts Xiao Su didn't notice the Badger's tired eyes gleam with ruthlessness. The Badger and the shadow continued to fight one another as Xiao Su steadily approached. The shadow dodged one of the badger's swipes then stepped back as the Badger smashed its paw into the ground and moved in for a body slam, but the body slam never came. Violent qi exploded from all four of the Badger's paws and it flew at Xiao Su real body at a frightening speed.
Stunned by the rapidly approaching body with an earthen glow, Xiao Su barely got her feet moving, there was no time to use Shade Contractor, she had to move now. Xiao Su's feet carried her away from the Badger's trajectory, towards its tail end to avoid the head, meanwhile her hands moved her spear in a flexible manner, almost making it appear as a liquid rather than a solid. She bent low and used the spear like a scoop to try and toss the Badger above her.
A ting sounded and the two went flying away from each other. Xiao Su was knocked onto the ground and skidded across it for several meters, meanwhile the Badger continued its travel through the air while flipping for several meters before landing painfully on its side, blood gushing from its hind leg. Xiao Su wasn't much better as she groaned on the floor and her spear fell from her trembling hands.
She'd tried to deflect the Badger above her, and she succeeded to an extent, but she hadn't fully calculated the old worn spear's sharpness, even with no force behind it, it pierced through the Badger's skin with absolute ease, inadvertently causing Xiao Su to take more of the monster's attack than she bargained for, nearly cracking the bones in her hands. She'd trained with her spear extensively and she knew it was sharper than it looked, but she'd never had anything to truly test its sharpness with before, it was well beyond her previous estimations.
Xiao Su couldn't get up yet but there was something unaffected by the clash, her shadow! Receiving her control, the shadow came and picked up the spear before heading towards the Badger.
The Badger looked at the approaching shadow and tattered spear in fear, particularly the spear. There was no doubt in its mind that staying meant being butchered. It forced itself to its feet and then ran as fast as it could with its injured leg in the opposite direction.
Seeing this Xiao Su sighed in relief at finally claiming the victory and steadily raised herself from the floor. She smiled happily after she got back on her feet; It wasn't easy, and it was a monster below her stage, but it was her first battle and her first win!
She was about to call out for He Lan and Ye Tai to celebrate when she heard a pitiful howl coming from the direction the Badger went in. Alert, Xiao Su immediately called the shadow over to protect her.
Soon He Lan walked over while Ye Tai dragged the giant Badger along with one arm. The Badger was beaten and bleeding from many new wounds and it was shivering in abject terror. Xiao Su wasn't sure if she should sigh in relief it was just them, or feel bad for the Badger.
Before she could sort out how she felt, Ye Tai tossed the badger in front of her and He Lan said, "Finish the task," in a cold tone.
"Eh, but I already beat it," Xiao Su said as she looked at the beaten Badger and then looked back at He Lan in confusion and a little fear. She was good at reading He Lan's emotions and knew her cold face was just a front that hid her warm nature, but now the impression she got was that the insides were as frigid as the outside.
He Lan shook her head grimly. "I never told you to beat it," she said intensely. "I told you to kill it."
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
FaustVoncleave
FaustVoncleave Sorry about the long Hiatus. Long story short, last month of a college semester is a pain, lots of research papers, group projects and finals due. I finished my last final tomorrow and was finally able to get something done. I'll make up the chapters I missed in time, I missed 6 Mondays, so deducting this one I owe 5 more chapters.
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