"This will be my first time trying this out on someone. Please forgive me if I make any mistakes, alright? I am not as young as I used to be." Lei Zhi chuckled.
"Don't you fools know you're courting death by messing with us?!" He spat.
With a quick jab of his pink needles, the man lost all feeling within his left arm. The sight of his arm hanging limp frightened him horribly. He couldn't move his arm at all! Not even by surging his qi within his body! Realizing that he couldn't use his left arm anymore, he tried striking Lei Zhi in the face with his foot.
Hu Tao jumped at the chance to get involved. He wrapped his chains around the 6th stage Qi Consolidator's leg, stopping his foot from reaching Lei Zhi. His chains slowly started to wrap around his entire figure along with his two allies. Completely, restricting their movements and attempts of resistance. Now, they were mostly helpless in front of Lei Zhi's needles.
"Thank you for that Hu Tao. I didn't even see it coming." He let out a breath of relief.
"Whatever old man. I didn't do it for you." Hu Tao brushed off his thanks.
"What are these chains made of!?" The 3rd stage cried out.
"How could a pathetic 3rd stage Qi Consolidator like you hold me?!" The 4th stage disciple yelled angrily at Hu Tao.
"These chains must be a sky rank treasure to render me powerless against them... Just who are you people?" The 6th stage asked, slowly realizing that these strange disciples weren't so simple.
"We're Heaven's Angels." Wan Qing was more than happy to announce. She loved the name.
"Heaven's Angels..." He rolled the name around in his tongue as if it gave him a bad after taste.
"Try not to move please. If I miss a qi point while doing this, you might not ever be able to flow qi through that part of your body ever again." Lei Zhi asked politely.
"You're not blind, are you...?" The 3rd stage cultivator asked.
"Yes, I am." Lei Zhi answered kindly.
"So, your plan was to torture us for information from the beginning! Letting this blind old man poke, prod, and destroy us slowly until we revealed everything we knew!" The 4th stage glared pure hatred at Heaven's Angels.
"My offer was quite merciful but you refused." Jing shrugged.
"Ha! You must be joking! You aren't referring to that ridiculous offer from before, are you?"
"You don't seem to understand your current situation, do you?" Jing said as if she was talking to a child.
"What are you talking about? Are you talking about how your entire little group is going to be destroyed by our leader?! Because it's going to happen once he finds out we haven't returned!" The 3rd stage prattled.
Jing found some amusement in his deep trust of this mysterious leader of his. To think that the weakest of these three would have the loudest mouth. I guess they do say that the smallest of dogs bark the loudest. She hoped that he would still be willing to bark some more after Lei Zhi is finished with him.
"Lei Zhi. Get to practicing." Jing ordered.
He nodded and the needles shined from the sun's rays on them. They looked particularly scary after his warning from earlier floating around in their heads. Could he really cripple them with such tiny silly looking needles? Who has ever heard of a Qi Gatherer being able to cripple a Qi Consolidator? Even the most talented of Qi Gatherers have their limits. The three cultivators figured that the old man must be spouting nonsense in hopes of scaring them into listening. For a weak and pathetic looking old man, he sure played a devious front.
Lei Zhi began practicing his combat martial art. His needle was aimed to pierced through a specific qi point on the 3rd stage's arm and it would have if the third stage didn't focus his qi into his head and headbutt Lei Zhi backwards. He laughed seeing Lei Zhi bang his skull against the ground. Did he kill the old man on accident? He hoped so.
"That's what you get for looking down on me! Fool!" He happily boasted.
"You don't know how happy I am you did that." Hu Tao grinned.
His foot slammed upward into the 3rd stage's chin, launching him away in an arc. Hu Tao appeared over the flying body of the youth and dove down, clutching his hand around the boy's throat. They crashed into the ground, bringing up grass, dust, and dirt around them. Once the dust cloud cleared, Hu Tao could be seen with his hand wrapped around the youth's throat. Choking him, he was helpless under his Hu Tao's superior strength.
Hu Tao could still see signs of resistance in his eyes. This made him very pleased. That meant he could still dish out a little more punishment! While the 3rd stage was choking, Hu Tao began punching him straight in his gut. Just to add to his hurting. His fist started ramping up in speed when the boy still showed no signs of giving up.
"Don't kill him now. I still have a use for him." Jing reminded the crazed mutt.
The fighting maniac tossed the severely injured 3rd stage over to Lei Zhi. If he didn't stop himself now, he would've definitely killed that guy. Having his prey taken away from him didn't make him upset this time around. There were still 2 others that could try and put up a fight next. Hu Tao greedily stared at the 4th stage and 6th stage cultivators, hoping that they two wanted to put up a fight.
Unfortunately for him, they didn't plan to resist after seeing their ally nearly beaten to death. Whatever these chains were made of were too powerful to try and break from. They would be nothing but toys for Hu Tao to play with as he pleased if they tried to resist. Why be beaten half to death when you could simply not be beaten half to death?
Lei Zhi by now has long since recovered from his head wound. A quick recovery pill from Ying and he was good to go after a few minutes. He started his procedure on the unconscious patient first. It would be easier to work on someone who wasn't aware of what was happening to their body.
His needles moved slowly with careful precision. Lei Zhi effectively slowed the rate of qi flowing through the 3rd stage's body. This would make it harder for him to perform martial arts and recover qi. And unless he found a person educated on the inner qi system to enlarge his qi pathways, there was no way of him doing it himself. It was because of this that Lei Zhi was glad to have this combat art. With this, he could disable and weaken anyone after his life. If they came after him much later even after dealing with him once, he could easily flee from them in their weakened state.
The necessary amount of coins to fix a problem like this wouldn't be available to the common cultivator. They would have to fork out a large sum to have an alchemist or doctor unblock their qi points. It is not an easy or quick process. Lei Zhi was rather lucky in obtaining both God's Fingers and Blind Man Can See. With his auxiliary art, Blind Man Can See, it is far easier to spot the hundreds of qi points within the body. But just being able to see these points wasn't everything. Lei Zhi needed to be able to accurately stab his needles down a certain depth, angle, and with a specific speed. All these would take time to master and perform with great skill.
And with the help of these three who broke into Jing's home, Lei Zhi got some much needed experience with his combat art, God's Fingers. He made several mistakes with the 3rd stage and 4th stage Qi Consolidators that caused them both to release bloodcurdling screams of pain and agony. In his attempts to fix his mistakes, even more accidents happened. By the end of their treatment, two paralyzed figures laid in the grass with every vein visible, throbbing. They still didn't give up any information or apologies though.
"I feel like I learned a lot with these two young men. I'm sure I won't make the same mistakes with you." Lei Zhi told the 6th stage.
The senior who had chains wrapped around his legs and torso bowed before Jing.
"I apologize for me and my juniors rude actions towards you. We will reimburse you for your door and tell you anything you wish to know." He said with his forehead touching the ground.
Lei Zhi was slightly saddened he might not be able to continue his practice. He was quite confident this time he wouldn't make a mistake like with the first two.
"I was enjoying the show quite a bit. Are you sure you want to tell me anything I wish to know?" Jing asked, taking pleasure in the whole situation.
"I've never been more sure of anything in my life."
"What a shame." She sighed. "Alright tell me the name of your faction, how many members you have, what's your leader's name, his cultivation stage, and who told you about me."
"We're part of the Crimson Swordsmen. We have over 100 members. Our leader is the talented Zhixin who's a 9th stage Qi Consolidator. Our leader told us about you, we have no idea where he learned of you from." He willingly spilled the beans.
"Zhixin?" Ying had no idea who he was.
"Hmm... That name ain't ringing any bells. Must be one of those secretive fuckers." Hu Tao casually insulted.
"I'm sure Zhixin is an Inner Court disciple that's close to becoming a Core Disciple." Lei Zhi added.
"That isn't good..." Bing said.
"Hmph. Why are you freaking out? It's not like a disciple on his level would personally come to destroy us or anything for these three. Even he has to keep some face." Wan Qing scoffed.
"And what if he doesn't care for face, Qing?" Jing asked her directly.
"Then we better get ready to die or pray for forgiveness."
"Logical answer but not the one I was looking for. Anyway, you all should look out for yourselves. Stay in pairs of 2 if you can help it. There won't be a small number of people after you all now that my identity and strength has been revealed. Ah, and come back here tomorrow. I have something I wish to test with you all. Lei Zhi, limit his strength and then send them on their way." Jing concluded their meeting.
Comment/Review on the story readers and give me ideas on possible xianxia things you want to see! No guarantees that I will add what you want. But it helps to have ideas out there. Please point out any mistakes you notice or anything you're not clear about. I'll try to answer them and fix them to the best of my abilities