2. Seven Years Later

Yale city was near the outskirts of the Azure Wind nation. Due to this reason, the city wasn't entirely urbanised. In fact around 20 percent of the city was woodlands. The officials in the city was not planning to urbanise the area any time soon either. Unlike most forests, this forest was relatively safe. This was a result of them ensuring from time to time that no powerful beasts exists in the forest.

The most powerful beast in the forest was a second elementary realm lion. It was the most basic type of lion yet that was all it needed to be the king of this jungle. At this moment, the lion was in hurt pursuit of a white-robed youth. From the aura given off by the boy it can be said that he was in the first level of elementary realm.

The boy had blue eyes and black hair that almost reached his shoulders. His face was pale as he ran from the lion but somewhere in the corner of his mouth, you could see a slight grin. He was actually enjoying the moment whilst simultaneously accumulating battle experience. Every know and then he would use his wooden sword to throw an attack at the lion and at other time he would be running at full speed.

This boy was called Chu Ming. He was the same boy who lost his parents and pretty much every member of his clan seven years ago, at the mere age of five. Chu Ming was not able to cultivate until he was almost 12 years old. It was not just Chu Ming, pretty much every single child had to wait around the age of 12 or 13 to start cultivating as that was when their meridians became developed enough to support cultivation. The fact that Chu Ming was able to start on his martial path before he was even 12 is more than enough to show his talent in this aspect.

Despite not being able to train his cultivation by absorbing spiritual energy, Chu Ming did not lay around waiting for his meridians to mature. He diligently trained his physical body breaking through limits one after another. Even though, he only had a cultivation at the first elementary realm, he was able to overcome opponents at second elementary realm. This was the main reason he was able to survive constant pressure from the second elementary realm lion even after acknowledging the fact that wild beasts of the same cultivation realm as humans were generally stronger than them.

At that moment, a jade flashed in his front pocket. It was a sound transmission jade: an object that is used to transmit voices without actually speaking out loud. A more advantageous characteristic of this object was that it could carry sound to a faraway distance as well depending on the quality. There were even rumours that a high quality sound transmission jade can carry objects hundreds and thousands of kilometres.

'Lil' brother Ming, that's enough fun,' the voice said. 'Let's head back'

'Alright, big brother Hao,' Chu Ming replied. 'Let me just lose this beast's pursuit.'

The person Chu Ming called 'big brother Hao' was naturally Chu Hao, his cousin who was two weeks older than him. Chu Hao also had a cultivation of elementary realm and was also physically strong like Chu Ming. Chu Hao personally was never interested in training his physical body but once he joined Chu Ming in training, he started realising the benefits it brought. However, he was far lazier when it came to this compared to Chu Ming and somewhat stopped training his body after he started cultivating.

A while later, an out of breath Chu Ming, who had successfully escaped the lion, met up with Chu Hao and they both started heading back to the city.

The walk from the edge of the forest to their home was about an hour and a half long. When they were still 20 minutes away from their house they sensed strong spiritual waves coming from a couple of streets down towards the south. It seemed as if two martial practitioners were having a fight.

Chu Ming's eyes glowed up with excitement when he deected their aura. A high level battle was always an eye opener for cultivators. If they gain elightenment and suddenly breakthrough, it would be extremely beneficial, so Chu Ming was never going to miss such an opportunity.

He looked towards and Chu Hao, who also looked at him at the same time with a similarly glowing set of eyes. Nothing needed to be said: they knew exactly what each of them were thinking and with a nod of their heads, they sped towards the site of the battle at their top speed.

When they arrived, they saw two figures going at each other with full force surrounded by quite a few audience. It seemed they weren't the only ones attracted to this battle.

After finding himself a good spot to stand, Chu Ming's eyes focused on both the figures. The fugure on the left seemed extremely slender and was dressed like an assasin, whilst the fugure on the right was a robust man with bulging muscles and thick axe for a weapon.

'The assassin must have been hired to kill this man, but failed with their usual sneak attacks.' Chu Ming thought.

When the assassin spoke for the first time, he confirmed Chu Ming's thoughts. "You were lucky to dodge my sneak attack, but no matter... you are fated to die underneath my blade today."

"Oh, is that so?" The robust man chuckled. "I would like to see exactly how you would do that"

As soon as he said that, his eyes constricted as the assassin appeared behind him with a instantaneous movement skill that was too quick for Chu Ming's eyes to follow.

"I guess you would be dead before you figure that out," the assassin sneered as he swung his blade at the back of the robust man's neck, his cultivation of ninth elementary realm exploding out.

But who would've thought that the robust man's shocked act was merely a facade and he had clearly anticipated the attack from behind. Before the blade even reached him, he turned around and swung his axe out to meet the blade head on.

"So what if you figured out my move, I have been building up for this attack for quite a while now," the assassin sneered. "Your make shift block will not affect my attack in the slightest."

But unexpectedly, the robust man suddenly started grinning with confidence. As the blade and the axe met, the logical victory of the assassin didn't occur. In fact, the assassin was sent flying backwards for 50 meters until he crashed into the side of a building.

When the assassin finally crawled out of the rubble, one could see that his right hand was extremely disfigured and could no longer wield a blade. But it could be seen from the shock in his face that what surprised more compared to his broken hand was his opponents cultivation .

"Tenth level of... elementary realm," he stuttered. "But... but the intel we had said that you were merely at eighth level of elementary realm. How... is this possible?!"

"Hehehehehe…" The robust man chucked once more, not bothering to explain.

"Dammit!!" The assassin cursed to himself and threw an extremely powerful attack with his left hand.

"It seems he is out of options," Chu Ming commentated to Chu Hao. "It's probably his most powerful attack in his current state. It should be the decider between victory and defeat."

However, Chu Ming's assumption was not entirely right. Whilst it was true that it was probably the assassin's last powerful attack, it was definitely not an attack with a purpose to determine victory or defeat. In actuality, it was just an attack used to delay the robust man when he turned the other way and escaped at top speed.

This went to show that despite Chu Ming being comparable to a second elementary realm practitioner with his rank 1 cultivation, his battle experience was still nowhere enough. This was understandable though: even with his extraordinary battle instincts and training in the wilderness, he had never once been in a life and death battle such as the once he was witnessing right now.

The robust man, on the other hand, was definitely not Chu Ming; he seemed to have been expecting such an attack. He merely snorted whilst dodging the attack.

"Since you came here to kill me, you might as well stay until I kill you!" After throwing out those words, he activated a movement skill and chased the assassin off into the distance.

"hmm...." Chu Ming sighed. "I wonder when I am gonna be that strong?"

Chu Hao, who was near him, started laughing out loud when he heard Chu Ming.

"Relex, Lil' bro, don't forget that you are 12 years old. By the time you are at their age, you will definitely be way stronger than they are right now."

"Mm, you're right," Chu Ming nodded. "And yeah, they are still weak when compared to someone like uncle..."

"Sigh..." Chu Hao face palmed. "You just never stop thinking about cultivation and gaining more strength, do you?"

"How can I? I should - no, I must - get stronger!" Chu Ming said while staring at the distant sky where the assassin and the robust man disappeared off to. He radiated determination from every part of his body with every word he said. "I need to be strong if I am ever going to have a chance at finding out what happened to my parents or what happened to our clan."

Chu Ming did not stop there; he continued, "I swear, I will never stop pursuing my martial path until I find them!"