After the Struggle

In the clearing of a small forest, sounds of blasts and screams could be heard. As another exploding Talisman went off, several figures were sent flying in different directions, crashing towards the feet of an old woman. Ignoring the struggling man, Li Tian Xi glared at the three figures opposing her.

"Why are you still struggling, Elder Tian Xi? You can't still be thinking that your precious Tai Shan is still going to be safe?" An elder, dressed in a dark crimson cloak cackled.

It had been over half an hour since the Zhou, Wu, and Liang clans had ambushed their search party at the Yellow Lillies Forest, and she still had not been able to break through the enemy lines. The Zhou family had created a large illusionary formation, trapping the guards of the Li clan, while the Wu and Liang Elders held off the Li elders, preventing them from forcefully breaking the illusion.

Li Tian Xi herself was being held back by the head elder of the Liang clan, along with the third and fourth head elders of the Wu clan. Besieged by two Earth Revolution and one Perceiving Mind Stage Cultivators, she could not muster a hint of advantage against the storm of defensive artifacts and talismans they had set up.

Nevertheless, she was not completely helpless against these three opponents, for as a fifth stage Earth Revolution, she outranked the next strongest enemy by three entire minor stages. Given enough time, Li Tian Xi could certainly break through their defensive tactics and greatly injure or even kill the two early-stage Earth Revolution Elders if she wanted to.

Unfortunately, time was a luxury that she couldn't afford at the moment. Every moment that the Li clan were stalled in this forest was a moment closer to their Young Master's doom, and the destruction of the Li clan's hope. In fact, he could have already perished already. Li Tian Xi only kept on battling because the Zhou and Wu clan had not retreated yet. That meant that they didn't know how the young master was doing either.

Looking back towards the figure who had mocked her, she detected traces of fatigue hidden in the prideful figure of the Wu Clan's third elder. He didn't act like anything was wrong, even though she had claimed a hand a few exchanges ago.

"Still acting coy, old man? Perhaps you'd like me to take another one of your hands!" Speaking these words, Li Tian Xi burst towards the three enemies, Prime Artifact in hand.

Seeing the approaching elder, the Head elder of the Liang Clan and the two Wu Clan elders braced themselves, preparing to fight another hundred rounds, when suddenly they saw Li Tian Xu's expression change. A moment later, she flashed twenty meters away from them, before taking out a azure talisman.

The communication talisman had gone off right before Li Tian Xi had charged into the enemy encirclement, causing her to reflexively pull back. How could Li Shun Feng have the time to contact her right now? Shouldn't they be fighting a life or death battle with the Zhou and Wu clan over at the commoner's market?

Looking warily at the enemy elders, Li Tian Xi carefully opened the communication talisman. As she peered at it's contents, she broke into a rarely seen grin.

"Hahaha! It looks like I won't be taking any more hands today!" She spoke, putting away the communication talisman.

Seeing her beaming face, the head elder of the Liang clan's heart jumped. "Impossible! They should be outnumbered 4 to 13! How can they have failed!?" He thought, panicking. As his face grew visibly worried, another talisman broke through the canopy of the forest, floating down to a location nearby. Moments later, an angry roar echoed through the forest. Then, the Zhou Clan's Illusionary formation disappeared.

Before he could ask what was going on, the head of the Zhou clan appeared before him, bearing an incredibly ugly looking expression. Holding out a crumpled talisman, he snarled, "Those fools failed, sound the retreat horns." Taking a look at the contents of the talisman, the Liang clan head elder's face became white, then red. Finally realizing what had gone wrong, his eyes narrowed, as if pondering something.

Making up his mind a moment later, he pulled out a large horn from seemingly nowhere, before blowing on it, sending sound waves echoing throughout the forest. Then, the five elders watched as several tens of uniformed individuals fled past them. The escaping men were naturally the Zhou, Wu, and Liang clan members that had been instructed to congregate at a safer location after the operation.

The Zhou and Liang head elders waited as their soldiers disappeared into the bushes, while the Wu elders flashed away as soon as the horn was blown. A few minutes later, after seeing no one else was running past them, the two turned around as well, walking into the shadowy forest.

<~>

"I'm fine, there is no need to tend to me,"

Zhang Chun Wu spoke as he climbed out of the arms of the third elder. The group of Zhang Clan rescuers had just disappeared from the view of the Gao clan's reinforcements when the seemingly unconscious third young master suddenly got back up.

Seeing his healthy visage, Zhang Wu Dao became slightly more relieved. Nevertheless, he spoke sternly to the child, "Chun Wu, stop moving! You were struck by the Prime Artifact of a Perceiving Mind-Stage Cultivator, even if it's just your arm, you should still exercise caution!"

"It's alright, I'll be fine." Bowing to the elder, he continued, "I need to go see someone." Then he turned and walked over towards a nearby carriage, finding the girl he had saved earlier crouching.

"Thanks," William spoke, taking over temporarily. Upon seeing her 'big brother', the girl who was attempting to hide behind the carriage carefully stood back up.

"Big brother's dragon was so cool!" She spoke excitedly, her eyes sparkling like jewelry. In turn, William broke into a wide smile.

"She must have seen the Koumori Dragon," he thought. Something about sharing the game that he was obsessed about with others had always made him happy. As he pondered over his emotions, a small ringing noise spoke into his mind.

list.

Reward: ???????????

Penalty: None>

Seeing the sudden quest notification, William raised an eyebrow.

"If I'm not mistaken, this quest wants me to give cards to another person?" He thought, looking at the girl. William briefly pondered the meaning behind the sudden quest that had been given to him. A moment later, as if making up his mind, he fished out a card from within his deck.

"If you like the dragon, I can give it to you as a gift." William said, handing the girl a copy of the Koumori Dragon inside his deck.

Looking at the flat card that William had handed her, the young girl took it, albeit with slight hesitance in her eyes. She pulled the card up to her face, examining the drawing of the dragon that was on the card.

"This is the dragon?" She asked sceptically.

"It doesn't look like it, but this is that dragon," William spoke, "it's name is Koumori Dragon, and it's a good friend of mine. Be sure to take care of it well." Rubbing her small head, William turned around, walking back towards the Zhang clan. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the old man from earlier rush over to where the girl was, and hugging her before he burst into tears.

"You gave away the card?" Zhang Chun Wu asked him as he rejoined the group.

"Mhm."

"But the card doesn't work without the Prime Artifact, doesn't it?"

"The girl thought the card was cool, why wouldn't I give it to her?" William asked, as he let Zhang Chun Wu retake the body. "Besides, I don't think I got nothing out of it." He spoke, glancing towards the quest tab.

[Detected that user has completed Special Quest: Gift of the Phantasmal Lord. Distributing rewards.]

It turned out that the quest had indeed want William to give away the card that the girl had wanted. However, he still wasn't sure why the system had made such a strange request. After all, Zhang Chun Wu had already pointed out the obvious: you couldn't use the card without the duel disk.

William briefly considered asking the system it's purpose for giving him the quest. However, as the idea of asking such a question flashed in his mind, he realized that the system would have already explained the situation to him if it had wanted him to know.

Once it detected a question in William's mind, it would answer the question immediately if it wanted to. Otherwise, it would remain silent even if William asked it for answers.

Seeing that his thoughts were going nowhere, William briefly put aside the question in his mind to look at the other two messages that had shown up as well.

[Detected that user has completed Daily Quest: Journey Through the Path. Distributing rewards.]

[Detected that user has completed Daily Quest: Share the Pain. Distributing rewards.]

The first message was as expected. William had gotten a similar one yesterday after the sparring practice with his sister, but the second message was a pleasant surprise.

"When did I do 4000 points of damage?" Although the earlier fighting was quite fierce, William had ultimately only summoned two monsters onto the field. He didn't think he had done 4000 points of damage within the duration of that shadow duel because the attack points of the Koumori Dragon and Gilasaurus combined only reached up to 2900, and the he didn't think that the Gilasaurus had done a lot after he had summoned it out.

Nevertheless, seeing the notification for the quest completion, he became quite happy.

The Zhang clan returned to their estate's front gate around half an hour after they had left the marketplace, bringing along the Li clan members who had been ambushed with them.

Li Shun Feng had already contacted their head elder earlier, letting her know to pick them up at the Zhang family gates. This was of course, approved by Li Tian Xi, who rounded up a small army to escort their young master back to their estate.

As Zhang Chun Wu watched the exchange of pleasantries between the head elders of the Zhang and Li clan, he noticed that Li Tai Shan, the cause of this entire debacle was unusually somber.

"He just got into a fight with a friend, of course he's not happy." Sensing his thoughts, William explained. Although children matured much faster in this world, having been forced to experience the cruelty of the cultivation world at a young age, they were of course, still children. And children would still do children things.

"Hmph. He most certainly deserved it." Zhang Chun Wu rebutted. Although the chatterbox was silent today, he did not forget the reason why he had given the kid a beating a few days back. Just like Gao Xue, Li Tai Shan's bad mouthing had triggered him that day, although he wasn't injured nearly as bad as the former.

William did not reply to his remark. In his opinion, words were merely words. Although they were designed to lacerate the heart, they came from a place of ignorance. Of course, ignorance was also the reason that he had attempted to teach the Zhou and Wu clan children a lesson in the beginning, but the disregarding of other's livelihood was a much more punishable offence than their disregard for someone's emotional state.

The two souls watched as the Li clan disappeared from sight, before turning to leave.

"So what are you going to do now that they know about your Prime Artifact?" Zhang Chun Wu asked abruptly, "The Zhou and Wu clan definitely know about the power levels of your summons now."

His words caused William to frown. A moment passed in silence before William spoke again.

"Well I guess we just have to make our deck stronger!"