The Six Immortals

 The Nefarious Chimera

He ran as fast as he could, as he was afraid that the demon might wander away and he’d miss his chance.

Suddenly, he felt arms moving around his chest, like those of a little guy. The Long Diao was finally awake.

Bi Fan was a lot more worried about Greedy’s wellbeing, when compared to finding a suitable demon to train on.

Bi Fan held up the Long Diao and looked at him carefully, almost as if studying him. He found very little change in his friend, his head was still very small, only his white hair had become even whiter, almost to the point where they seemed to be glistening and his eyes, his big bright eyes, looked even more quick-witted now.

“Greedy, are you hungry? Here, take this, eat up.” Bi Fan took out two herbs from the Tian Yuan ring and gave them to the Diao (I finally figured, its English equivalent, A Marten).

The Marten took the two herbs in his hands and gobbled them up quickly. Even after eating his regular meal, he was looking at Bi Fan pitifully, like he was trying to say that he hadn’t had enough yet.

“Greedy, I never thought that after your evolution, you would become even greedier. Ah” Bi Fan said, laughing meanwhile.

The Marten ate up two more herbs before looking satisfied and then, even managed a burp or two.

“Greedy, if you keep eating like this, one day, I’ll go bankrupt feeding you.” Bi Fan laughed as he patted his pet’s head.

“Creek….” The Marten creaked, expressing dissatisfaction, as if he was saying ‘I don’t eat that much’.

The Marten looked so adorable, that Bi Fan couldn’t help a smile: “Greedy, you need to find a place to hide, I’ve located a very powerful demon and I’m on my way to fight it now.”

Another huge roar from the beast ringed in the forest and Bi Fan accelerated his pace once again.

After a while, Bi Fan was able to finally get a look at the beast.

His fair were blazing red, his body formation like a lion, almost twenty feet in height, and thirty feet in length, which extended to almost forty feet owing to the serpent like tail that it had on its rear. The beast looked awfully terrible and scary.

“A Chimera! ” Bi Fan was taken by surprise.

Chimeras were very powerful, awfully nefarious demons, they had very powerful bodies and their tails were exceedingly toxic in nature. A magical powers level Chimera was capable of breathing fire as well, which made them a very lethal opponent.

Bi Fan recovered from the shock once he realized that this one was only in the ‘spiritual intelligence’ layer.

The fighting capabilities of this breed far exceeded those of the other demons in the same layer, and if this Chimera was even one layer higher than its present stage, Bi Fan would have surely fled by now.

The Chimera had clearly come out to hunt for food, an obvious fact, considering that it had its paws and all of its fifty-six teeth deep inside the flesh of a rhino, which was gasping for its last breaths.

Bi Fan didn’t react immediately, because he wanted to follow this demon around for a while, so that he could locate its cave, which he suspected must be somewhere nearby.

Usually a demon as strong as this one, were often known to be find accommodation around some sort of a treasure which they guarded with their lives, like a bunch of rare herbs or a crystal mine.

As long as Bi Fan was able to follow the Chimera back to its residence, he could get his hands on that treasure as well.

When the fighting would begin, the Marten could use the opportunity and sneak into the cave and steal the treasure. Now, obviously, the treasure would have to be fairly small in size for the Marten to be able to seize it by himself.

The Chimera picked up the rhinoceros in its mouth, with his teeth firmly dug into the dead animal, and made its way through the forest at a very quick pace and with exceptional ease, considering he had a rhino dangling from its mouth.

Bi Fan followed the Chimera from a distance, while being extremely careful, as he didn’t want his presence known to the demon.

He followed the Chimera for roughly an hour, and finally they arrived at a very deep lying valley. The Chimera put down its prey on a flat stone tablet and began enjoying his meal.

Right about now, when the Chimera was hungry, would be the best time to fight it, as it meant that he was low on energy.

Soon after arriving here, the Marten had been finding it hard to conceal his excitement, which meant that there was obviously something very nice here.

Bi Fan put the Marten down, and then marched out of his hiding spot.

“Roar!!!” The Chimera opened its bloodied mouth and let out a bellow of rage when he spotted Bi Fan.

While a nefarious Chimera is enjoying its meal, one should abstain from interrupting it. But since that didn’t stop Bi Fan, the Chimera went wild with anger, and its eyes, red with rage.

Bi Fan hadn’t even made a move yet, and the Chimera’s tail had already sweeping left and right.

Its dark tail was thick and strong, and in addition to this, it also was acutely poisonous and spiked at the end with barbs.

If these barbs managed to penetrate one’s skin, then they would inject a very dangerous poison into the body of the victim.

Even though Bi Fan had already taken a Sunset Jade Purifier, he was still afraid of that sweeping tail. He was afraid that the Sunset Jade purifier might not be enough to nullify the toxin that this beast could inject into his body.

Even without factoring in the toxins, the Chimera’s tail was fairly dangerous. He swept it around with such enormous force that taking a hit of that would be very unpleasant.

Bi Fan was very concentrated at the moment, mentally. He brandished the ‘dance of mist’ footwork and managed to dodge.

The Chimera’s tail had a sweeping radius of about one meter, and he had swept it at a decent height. The tops of all the boulders in that vicinity broke, and sprinkled to the ground.

Bi Fan inwardly smacked his lips; he needed to be more careful, if he wanted to get out of this in one piece.

Bi Fan sped up his movement, as he would need to get closer to the Chimera before he could launch any sort of an attack, something the Chimera’s tail would make a difficult task out of.

“Bang! Bang!….” The Chimera kept sweeping its tail wildly, and the trees and boulders in the vicinity were paying the price. Its tail had managed to sweep off chunks of moss from the tree trunks while the boulders were much worse off.

Bi Fan was awfully fast, and was managing to avoid that sweeping tail consistently, but it required a great deal of concentration on his part to do so.

Presently, Bi Fan was only about two meters away from the Chimera, so he took out his light-ray sword and cast out the ‘Fufeng double-edged sword’ attack.

‘Spiritual intelligence’ layer demon such as this one, are gifted with extremely hard skins which made it very hard to hurt them. On top of that, they also had a lot of inner energy which meant that they could continue fighting for a long duration.

Bi Fan’s light-ray sword was a top grade weapon, but when attacking a demon such as this Chimera, it was only capable of shaving off a few strands of hair from the target’s body.

But Bi Fan didn’t care much, he needed the Chimera to hone his martial art skill and wasn’t really interested in killing the beast.

So, one human against one Chimera in a fight, well, this was turning out to be a very fierce battle.

 

 The Nefarious Chimera

So, one human against one Chimera in a fight, well, this was turning out to be a very fierce battle.

The Chimera was incapable of using its tail at targets in close proximity, but it also had a very large mouth, which had very sharp teeth, and then, claws, which were its most aggressive weapons in war.

Grab, bite, thump, pounce…

The Chimera was willing to employ any means and any part of his body from head to toe.

Bi Fan was extremely agile and quick on his feet, and normally he would use ‘the immortal finger’ finger to save himself if he was caught in a moment of crisis, but hadn’t done that so far in this fight, as he hadn’t sustained any injuries.

Using ‘the immortal finger’ meant consuming a lot of his inner energy, so Bi Fan was judicious with its use, and only resorted to it in moments of grave crisis, to bail himself out.

The Chimera on the other hand was completely enraged by Bi Fan. He roared and roared, constantly storming towards Bi Fan, ready to shred him to pieces.

Bi Fan side stepped its attack, and intentionally backed away. He intended on leading the Chimera away from the valley and into the forest, this way the Marten could conduct his covert operation peacefully.

Soon, Bi Fan had managed to draw the Chimera away from the valley and into the forest.

Once inside the forest, the Chimera’s tail was confined due to all the big trees around them, which meant that he couldn’t use it as freely as he was able to earlier, which meant that Bi Fan could relax a bit.

The Chimera had a very strong body, but in this environment, the sheer size of its body reduced his agility.

Bi Fan was now fully concentrated on practicing his martial arts, using all kinds of sword techniques to attack. He cast the same skills out, again and again, trying to increase the efficiency of his attacks.

Using the same tricks, he tried to change the angle of the stab, tried varying the force and intensity and practiced on.

This was one of the benefits of having a sparring partner, for practicing in itself wasn’t enough, one also needed to explore.

It requires a very strong opponent to practice with if one needs to increase strength while being able to find the best combination of moves, angles, or trying to find a new style of fighting.

Finding demons in the devil’s territory was easy, but something as powerful with skin as rough and hard as this one’s, made for the best of sparring partners.

Bi Fan kept an eye out for the Chimera’s attacks and dodged them effectively, but apart from that, he was having a jolly good time, he had already cast out the same moves almost a dozen times.

Apart from swords play, he had even resorted to melee attacks, and had already tried to use the Wan Zu boxing style, punching and pounding.

The Chimera was completely enraged, mad and violent by now. Even though he wasn’t injured, but his inability to tear Bi Fan to pieces was driving it mad, which reflected in its fighting.

“Roar!” The Chimera made an unexpected move and severed the trees in the immediate space.

The tall and towering trees fell down, giving the Chimera sufficient space to move around. Scared, Bi Fan dodged his way away from the Chimera.

“Creak….” The Marten creaked, announcing that he had returned from its operation, but Bi Fan had no idea whether he had succeeded or not.

Bi Fan had expended most of his inner energy and decided that it was time to withdraw.

Especially considering that the Chimera was even angrier now, Bi Fan figured that it’s in his best interests to find a temporary refuge and restore his strength.

As Bi Fan turned around and made a run for it, the Chimera decided to pursue him, still angry at Bi Fan’s intrusion.

The Chimera was really quick on its feet, forcing Bi Fan to scurry, in a completely disarrayed fashion. Bi Fan was trying to pick his path through the most obstacle studded routes, choosing to make his way through areas where the trees were clustered close together.

The trick finally worked. Due to the sheer size of the Chimera’s body, he was unable to intertwine his way through the forest like Bi Fan. And since Bi Fan was taking his detours through areas where the density of tree population was at its maximum, the Chimera was slowed down further and eventually gave up.

Bi Fan finally got rid of Chimera and breathed a sigh of relief, and the Marten showed up by his side.

Inside the forest, the Marten was one of quickest animals, even Bi Fan couldn’t hope to keep up with his pace here.

A black lotus was dangling from the Marten’s mouth. The lotus was the size of a wash basin and the Marten was holding it from its stem, between his teeth.

The black lotus was flickering and shimmering, making it appear as if the lotus was blazing with a dark black fire.

Bi Fan had inadvertently seen something like this before and knew that this was a very precious flower. An extremely rare breed of flora which could be best described as extremely poisonous.

This lotus was even more toxic than the Chimera, and its poison contained a great amount of aura. This lotus’s poison was classified as a Mysterious level entity, which meant that it would most certainly be a favorite for the Chimera that it was stolen from.

Plants, including poisonous ones that contained aura inside them were classified into nine categories, as yellow, mysterious, earth, sky, king, emperor, Imperial, aged, and legendary. And further, depending on their potency, they were divided into four more sub categories.

The Chimera was probably guarding this lotus as he needed this nefarious breed of flora for his evolution at some point in time.

“Greedy, here, let me have a look.” Bi Fan reached over to the Marten, excitedly.

Bi Fan had barely ever touched a Mysterious level Panacea; the ones that he had been planting all his life were mostly yellow level herbs as he had never been given the responsibility of such precious herbs at the orchards.

The last time he had seen a mysterious level herb, was inside that Mysterious ravine that he had accidently ventured into. The rainbow colored flower that he had tried to pick up on his way out was in considered similar in ranking as this one.

However, this nefariously poisonous Lotus was extremely rare, even more so than that flower which took centuries to bloom.

The Marten was a little reluctant to hand it over, but did so any way.

Bi Fan picked up the lotus very carefully, he wrapper its stem in cloth before holding it in his hands.

He was preparing to take a close look at the black Lotus when suddenly, out of his body, emerged silk-like black threads, and all of a sudden, enveloped the black lotus in their grasp.

This was the first time that Bi Fan was conscious when the black thread had come out of his body. He was completely unaware of their existence; his heart skipped a beat as he looked on in absolute horror at the black silk threads that were coming out of his body.

The black silk threads scared the Marten as well, who ran, petrified, screeching and squeaking long the way.

The black lotus started melting and eventually disappeared, even its stem vanished into nothingness.

The black silk threads that had emerged from his body looked even shinier now, than they had emerging from his body, and soon after, disappeared into his body, leaving no trace of their existence.

Bi Fan stood there for a long time, motionless, speechless.

How could black silk threads like those ones be coming out of my body? What were those black silk threads? Why did those threads absorb the black lotus?

Bi Fan’s heart and mind were filled with doubts and fears.

“Creak….” The Marten creaked from a distance, looking rather annoyed. This lotus was supposed to be his treat, not only did it contain an amazing amount of aura; it was also extremely poisonous; just what a growing Marten likes.

The disappearance of the black lotus had certainly made the Marten angry.

On top of that, he also seemed very scared of the black silk threads that had emerged out of Bi Fan’s body and wouldn’t dare come near Bi Fan, for now.

The Marten made another squeaking sound, almost as if he was yelling at Bi Fan, as Bi Fan touched himself, to ensure himself that nothing strange was going on now.

“Fortunately, no one was harmed.” Bi Fan breathed out a sigh of relief.

“However, what were those black silk thread at the end of the day? And how did they get inside my body? Will they remain there?” Bi Fan was completely puzzled and his head was exploding with questions.

Bi Fan carefully examined his body, which showed no trace of any kind of abnormality, and he couldn’t make any discovery regarding the existence of the threads. He started introspecting, meditating, trying to search the depths of his mind for any knowledge of this incident, he needed to know.