Night of the blood mist

While the others watched from behind the leader and his two other third rate martial artists stepped forward arrogantly and went to grab the sword out of the girls hands when suddenly the sword swiftly cut palms of their outstretched hands leaving behind a deep cut while the leader remained a small distance away from the blades reach.

"Ah.." the two men held their hands with their other hand and tried to stop the flow of blood backing away from the girl.

In the process of receiving the wound and trying to stop the blood flow they had released the grip of their weapons which then fell to the ground

"You idiots." The leader laughed seeing his subordinates fail to grab the blade from girl. "Such an easy task and you can't even complete it."

The leader held onto his sword and stood threateningly pointing his sword towards the girls throat some distance away. "I will give you one more chance, drop your blade or I will spare you losing a hand or two. Although we need you alive we do not need you as a whole body."

The man did not seem to notice the abnormality of his subordinates, as they tried to stop the blood from coming from their wound they began to feel irritable within the place that was cut.

"Aaaah." The two men were clutching their injured hands in pain as if restraining themselves, one of the men began scratching at his own wound making the bleeding become worse.

As the men began to scream several figures ran from different directions covered in black cloaks and a mask covering the lower half of their faces.

The group of masked figures drew their weapons and charged at the unprepared enemies targeting the weakest of the bandit group first to lessen their numbers quickly.

One of the men could not stop scratching his wound and cried out in pain and madness while the other had more self restraint and willpower.

He picked up his weapon and quickly chopped at his wrist removing his hand and shouted. "Boss be careful of that girls sword, it's poisoned."

He then ran to the campfire and tried to use something to burn the wound to stop the bleeding, he found that the pan to cook the meat was scalding hot so placed the open wound into the bottom of the pan followed by a shriek of pain. "Gaaaaaah."

The man could barely hold onto his consciousness during the pain and his vision was becoming blurry even with his efforts to fight the fatigue, he looked towards his companion who rolled around in his own blood screaming while digging into his wound. 'Idiot. No we are all idiots. We should of never looked down on a kid who could enter the forest during this late of a night alone. We should of suspected it from the beginning but she acted enough to drop our guard.'

The man finally lost consciousness while his companion slowly bled to death.

Ki noticed as she clashed swords with the leader that he was taller, had a longer reach and was stronger as he was a fully grown adult. 'But my technique is better than his.'

Every slash of his sword was met with Ki's blade as she slowly began to familiarise herself with the forms she had been practicing. 'Indeed nothing beats learning from experience.'

She met his downward diagonal cut with an upward diagonal cut at a point of his sword where he had the least control and twisted her wrist sending his sword away from its intended route.

A series of exchanges took place, Ki quickly progressed at a rapid rate slowly perfecting her usage of her use of forms and focussed solely on her opponents moves.

The outside world did not matter at that moment as she was using the person in front of her to gain back the battle senses she honed during the many years of being between life and death.

Many clashes took place followed by screams of the man bleeding to death and the clashing of weapons behind the leaders back.

Some tried to flee the men in masks but were blocked at all angles as the masked men closed in on them.

'So this is the joy of battling an opponent. I never really felt this rush in the past life because of my desperation to get revenge. It seems like this opponent is not enough of a rival to make me desperate enough or push myself more than what I have just achieved. Now it is time to stop defending from his attacks and make a move.' Ki blocked another downward slash of the leaders sword with an upward slash pushing the enemies blade away again.

This time instead of waiting to counter the next attack she turned her wrist so the palm holding her blade was facing downwards, she tightly gripped the hilt of her sword and made a cutting motion from left to right.

The cut tore through the mans stomach, the leader clutched the wound and gasped in pain while his eyes were full of disbelief. "How is this possible?"

Ki stood back from the leaders sword range and watched to see what he would do next. 'Bring me down with him, try to run… or is it to beg for mercy?'

Ki however did not have the patience to wait for his actions and shouted. "Use your blood absorbing ability on your enemy if they are cut!"

While the slaves managed to bring down the weaker bandits or exiled villagers they still struggled to take down experienced ones.

The slaves had very little combat experience so they at most were able to inflict minor wounds on the remaining bandits however after hearing Ki's order they grasped the situation by activating the ability to absorb the blood from their enemies open wounds.

Ki activated her own mystic blood arts and held her hand towards the leaders direction while the other palm faced towards the bleeding and convulsing man on the ground.

The blood from the wounds began to flow at a faster rate from the wounds and turned into a blood mist.

The leader had already been struggling with his deep wound and the irritation from the poison, now he was being drained at a fast rate and his legs began to tremble with weakness. "You…"

The blood mists travelled to Ki's palm and coiled around her arms until they settled into the lit up tattoo markings.

After completely draining and killing the two men Ki stopped using her ability and the markings slowly faded into the skin in her arms and back as if they were never there to begin with. 'This was a good chance to practice my control of my abilities and martial arts and collect vitality in case I begin to overuse my own vitality during the training of the Blood Buddha Qi Art. Although it is a powerful ability to strengthen the muscles with my own vitality or blood Qi, the longer I practice and wish to strengthen my muscle strength using this art the higher quality or quantity of vitality is needed for every stage. So the storage and draining abilities of the mystical arts are very useful for allowing me to collect lots of vitality and keep it stored until I need to use it.'