The crimson-gold light of Li Yu's soul-merged state faded from his eyes, leaving behind the cold, hard glint of murderous intent. He took a step, and then another, his heavy Condensed Sea Iron Ore staff held loosely in one hand, its black surface seeming to drink the dim forest light.
Each step was deliberate, closing the distance to the broken, bleeding figure embedded in the granite cliff face. The battle was over, but the threat was not yet eliminated. As long as this man drew breath, his retainers were not safe.
The cloaked man groaned, his body a ruin of shattered bones and ruptured meridians. He managed to lift his head, his vision swimming. Through a haze of pain and disbelief, he saw the young man approaching, not with the triumphant look of a victor, but with the cold, dispassionate gaze of an executioner. The last vestiges of his pride as a Soul Formation expert evaporated, replaced by a primal, desperate fear of imminent death.
"Wait! Stop!" he croaked, his voice a ragged mess of pain and panic. "Peace! It was all a misunderstanding! A grave misunderstanding!"
Li Yu did not slow. The man's words were a distant buzzing, irrelevant in the face of the cold fury that still gripped his heart. He raised his staff, its immense weight feeling like a feather in his hands, preparing to deliver the final, decisive blow that would erase this threat from existence.
"He wasn't trying to kill us, Wise Host!"
Kui's voice, strained but clear, cut through Li Yu's rage. He stopped, his staff held high, his body a drawn bow of lethal potential. He turned his head slightly, his cold gaze falling upon his three retainers, who were now standing safely behind the silent, imposing form of Khaos.
Kui, his face pale and his defensive turtle shell technique now faded, took a hesitant step forward. "His attacks… they were overwhelming, but they lacked true killing intent. He was toying with us, trying to suppress us. If he had truly wanted us dead, we would have been gone in the first exchange."
Cyra, her phantom limbs now retracted, nodded in agreement. "He is right. Every blow was meant to neutralize, not to maim or kill. It felt like he was trying to capture us."
Li Yu's gaze shifted back to the broken man in the cliff. His rage had been an inferno, but the words of his trusted retainers were like a splash of cool, clear water, not extinguishing the fire, but banking it, allowing his usual cautious pragmatism to resurface. He lowered his staff, though his grip remained tight, and took the final few steps until he was standing directly before his defeated foe.
"Explain," Li Yu said, his voice flat and devoid of any emotion. It was not a request; it was a command.
The man in the cliff coughed, a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth. He looked up at Li Yu, his eyes, now visible through his tattered hood, filled with a mixture of pain, awe, and utter bewilderment.
"It is as I said… a misunderstanding," he gasped. "When I arrived in this clearing, my spiritual sense detected three powerful beings. But your retainers… their auras are not human. They are the auras of powerful beasts."
He gestured weakly with a shattered arm towards Spine, Kui and Cyra. "Where I am from, for beasts of their level to be roaming freely in human lands… it is unthinkable. It is an act of war. For generations, an impassable boundary has separated our continents. Humans do not enter the beast lands, and beasts do not enter ours. Any who cross the line are to be killed on sight. It is the law that has kept the peace for a thousand years, each side living in their own place."
His explanation was delivered with a strange, almost righteous conviction, as if he were explaining a self-evident truth. "I did not know the customs of this land were so different. When I sensed them, my immediate instinct, my duty as a human cultivator, was to subdue them before they could bring harm to this region. My intent was never to murder them right away, only to suppress them, to capture them and neutralize what I perceived to be a grave threat. I swear this on my dao heart."
Li Yu listened in silence, his expression unreadable. He had, of course, heard tales of other continents, distant lands separated by the impassable Endless Sea, but they were little more than stories since he's never met anyone from there. He had never considered that the relationship between humans and beasts could be that much different where this man was.
He thought about it a bit more and it was actually similar to here, there was no hard border, but most of the stronger beasts were found in the western lands, at least that's what he knew.
He looked back at his retainers, who all gave a slight, confirming nod. Their own combat experience backed up the man's story. The fight had been terrifying, but it had felt like a powerful adult trying to put three unruly children in a cage, not a killer trying to slaughter his prey.
"Where are you from?" Li Yu asked, his voice still cold.
"I am from the Eastern Continent," the man answered. "The land that lies across the Endless Sea."
He coughed again, a pained, wheezing sound. "I have been a cultivator for three hundred and seventy years," he continued, his voice now a mixture of pride and profound, soul-shaking confusion as he looked at Li Yu. "I reached the Soul Formation realm at the age of two hundred, a feat that marked me as a super genius in my homeland. For the last twenty years, I have been stuck at the peak of the 2nd level, unable to find the inspiration, the opportunity, to break through to the third. My master advised me to undertake a journey of discovery, to leave my homeland and see the world, to seek new challenges and insights that might temper my spirit and allow me to advance."
His gaze locked onto Li Yu, his eyes filled with a desperate need for understanding. "In my homeland, I am a monster. There is no one in my generation who can match me. I have never been truly challenged by a cultivator in the same realm, let alone been so utterly, so completely defeated by… by someone from a realm so far below my own."
The raw, bewildered shock in his voice was genuine. The entire foundation of his worldview had been shattered in the last ten minutes. He had been a god walking among mortals, only to find that one of the 'mortals' was an ancient, terrifying dragon in disguise.
"Is everyone… is everyone like you here?" he asked, the question a quiet, pleading whisper. "Are your Core Formation cultivators all capable of shattering the sword of a Soul Formation expert? Is your entire continent populated by monsters who defy all the known laws of cultivation?"
Li Yu simply stared at him, offering no answer. Thoughts turning into his mind, "Soul Formation realm?" A realm that was described very vaguely in the texts available to him and the additional information that he's learned from his retainers.
"The Eastern Continent?" Yet another thing that was very vague from the information he has. It would seem that without a certain level of power, it was very difficult to cross the endless sea. What a dumb name for a sea that actually has other continents on it though he thought. What Li Yu doesn't know and won't know til much later is that the endless sea got its name for another reason.
It was then that Khaos, who had been standing silently in the background, took a single, fluid step forward. He looked at the broken man in the cliff with an expression of utter contempt then turned his gaze to Li Yu.
"You are still too weak," Khaos said, his voice a low, resonant hum of disappointment. "Too slow. You possess the power of the void, yet you barely used it. Your javelins were a crude application, and you failed to integrate it into your close-quarters combat. Your movements were inefficient. You wasted energy. Your fight… was barely passable for a 2nd level Core Formation cultivator."
The cloaked man's jaw dropped. The insult was so profound, so utterly dismissive of the life-and-death struggle he had just endured, that for a moment, he completely forgot his shattered bones and ruptured organs. A surge of pure, apoplectic rage washed over him. He stared at Khaos, his mind finally latching onto a semblance of an explanation for the impossible events that had just transpired. 'This must be his master!' he thought, a wave of cold dread washing away his anger. 'Of course! The boy is a monster so his master must be even more of a monster, but barely passable?!' he thought.
"BARELY PASSABLE?!" he shrieked, his voice cracking with a mixture of rage and disbelief. "I am a 2nd level Soul Formation expert! A super genius! And you… you dare… GAH!" He devolved into a fit of pained, furious coughing, the sudden outburst sending agony through his broken body. He had just been defeated by a monster, and now this even more terrifying being, who was clearly the boy's master, was calling that monster's performance subpar. The humiliation was a deeper wound than any his body had sustained.
Li Yu ignored the man's outburst. His cold fury had subsided, replaced by a quiet, focused concern. He turned his back on the man in the cliff and walked directly to his retainers.
"Are you all right?" he asked, his voice now filled with a genuine warmth that was reserved only for those closest to him.
"We are… unharmed, Wise Host," Kui said, still breathing heavily. "My spiritual energy is depleted, but there are no lasting injuries."
"We are fine," Cyra confirmed, her expression one of immense relief.
Spine simply shook his head. "No injuries that wouldn't heal with a bit of time."
Li Yu nodded, his gaze sweeping over them. He could see the strain on Kui's face and the lingering spiritual exhaustion clouding Cyra and Spine. Channeling his energy into them here would be slow and inefficient.
He focused his will, and a soft, opalescent light enveloped the three of them. Based on their deep connection, they understood his intent immediately and offered no resistance. In an instant, they simply vanished, drawn into the rich, restorative environment of his Koi Sanctuary to heal and recover their strength.
The man in the cliff watched the three figures disappear into thin air. He blinked, but his expression was one of understanding rather than shock. 'A beast bag, he thought, the conclusion simple and logical. A high-grade one, to be sure, to hold three such powerful creatures.' It was the only part of the entire encounter that had made any sense to his shattered worldview.
With his retainers safely taken care of, Li Yu finally turned his attention back to the complex problem now embedded in the cliff face. The man was defeated, his story bizarre but seemingly credible. He was also a walking repository of knowledge about a world they had never known existed.
The man had stopped his furious coughing and was now staring at Li Yu and Khaos with a look of dawning, existential terror, as if he had just realized he had stumbled out of his own pond and into an ocean filled with ancient, unknowable leviathans.