Pathway

After recovering back from the little shock, he carefully and thoughtfully looked at the bamboo trees. These were serious foes that deserved proper attention. He started to analyse what could be wrong in his mind without allowing the steward to know that he had no idea of everything going on. Although they looked different from the ones in Lorra, they were still bamboo tree.

Did he tried to cut a bit too high? It must be, he would try to cut low next.

He swung the axe low hoping it would be fine the next time around but, he received the same shock that made him staggered a few steps back.

"What is wrong with this boy? Is he sick in the head or trying to properly waste my time?"

The steward looked at Ju Feng in bewilderment. Never had he seen anything or anyone behaved like that before.

"Hey you! Why are you behaving this way? I still have a lot to do, get on with it and stop wasting my time. I warn you."

"Senior, I assure you, I'm really trying to cut the bamboo trees. But, they are too strong."

"How can you be using your Chi to cut the Ten Trigram spirit bamboo trees?. If you are really trying, you will use your natural strength and not your stupid Chi. Now, can you carry on so we can leave here on time?"

"I will give it my all senior, you can count on that."

Body strength. Well, he should be able to relate to that, his bones was already strong like that of silver snow bear and his body like that of a mountain.

Knowledge was truly the key to success. Having known how, he landed his stroke on the bamboo stem with greater success. There was no reflective shock or any repercussion.

He continued to land his swing on the bamboo and chips started to appear on the bamboo stem after every swing. He continued to swing the axe and after ten minutes, he finished with the bamboo tree then moved to the next one. It took him three hours to finish cutting the twenty bamboo tree and arranged them into rolls of tens.

"Heaven's tears, thank you for putting my life and maybe yours, into consideration. Maybe you are not that stupid. I believe you can still participate in the competition, after all. Let's go."

They returned to the outer hall where sect stewards were dividing the outer disciples into groups. Ju Feng quickly joined the disciples on the instructions of apprentice. There were five groups of twenty disciples each, all together and he was in the fifth group.

They were lined up according to their group as they walked towards the sect's arena. The sect's grand master, the masters, the associate masters, sect stewards and the sect's disciples were already at the arena when the outer disciples marched in.

The grandmaster raised his magnified voice which filled the whole arena.

"I welcome you all to the annual Bloodgrit competition. It is our tradition to welcome new disciples into the inner sect through this competition where they would be directly under school masters after being successful. We know it would have been difficult for you to enter this sect directly to become inner disciples due to different reasons, but you have the chance to do that through this competition and you must grab it with both hands."

He stopped to look around, there was total silence in the arena as he continued.

"We have a total of twenty masters who are assisted by their associates, masters with great abilities and powers that will surely further your development and advancement in leaps. After successfully completing the competition, the masters will choose ten of you to be directly under them, to learn from them. So I tell you, give it your sweat and blood and maybe you can be one of the chosen. We will start with the collection of the magical beasts' cores from the dale of beasts. Let the competition begin."

Ah, Charat planet. Heavens tears! How did he get himself involved in all these? The world wasn't his birth world in the first place. Would he turn to beasts' food himself in a foreign world? How ironic would it be, for him to be eaten by a magical turtle. Really ironic. His mother, grandparents, uncle primus and his friends at sect. Heavens tears.

Having no idea where the dale of beasts was, he decided to stay in the middle of the group of disciples. He couldn't ask any disciple for help or direction since it was every disciple to himself or herself. Pretending to know his way around, he increased his pace to match that of the speeding disciples. He couldn't even use the swift spine technique not to give much away, the generally known light steps was enough for him to keep up.

Thirty minutes later, they arrived at the dale of beasts. The haven of the magical beasts was a wide area that stretched for miles and surrounded by mountains and hills. Although, the dale mostly contained less powerful magical beasts, it was not a place to be taken lightly. It was the beasts which a cultivator couldn't detect that were the most dangerous.

But the good thing was that, the magical beasts were not sentient animals, they could not reason or strategize. They only knew either to attack or to run away.

Since it was a very wide area, the disciples spread out looking for magical beasts. Some of them were combing the outside perimeters while some ventured a bit further into the dale. Before long, many disciples have started engaging some beasts in gruelling battles. But one thing he could see was their strength, they were on par and some were even stronger than him.

Are these people eating rocks and metals? They were not even Zhuji yet. How come?

Glancing at them occasionally, he shookhis while making his way forward.