Though Andy had now been cultivating for ten years, he had never once encountered a spirit beast, and the thought of coming face to face with one of those legendary creatures filled him with equal parts curiosity and fear. On top of that, he had not a scrap of combat experience to draw on. After thinking it over carefully, he decided to take the other mountain path—the safer one. It would cost him several extra days, but that was a far better outcome than stumbling into a senseless death on his very first day out.
Cultivators possessed considerably more physical endurance than ordinary mortals, but at only the fourth layer of Qi Refinement, Andy was still thoroughly worn out after a full day on the mountain roads. He decided it was time to eat something and rest properly for the night. He had left the Jian clan without a water flask or any rations, but for a cultivator, food and water were never a difficult problem to solve. In fact, once a cultivator reached Foundation Establishment, their body, tempered by powerful spiritual energy, became fundamentally unlike that of an ordinary mortal; they could achieve a state of Grain Abstinence, sustaining themselves entirely through drawing in the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, with no need to eat or drink at all.
Andy let his full awareness spread out around him. With his unusually strong spiritual sense, he could monitor everything within a radius of several dozen zhang—the faint sound of an earthworm burrowing into the soil, the drifting fragrance of wildflowers, the specks of pollen clinging to a bee as it moved between blossoms. All of it appeared clearly in his mind. He found himself thoroughly enjoying the sensation. At greater distances the sensitivity faded, but a wild rabbit nibbling at tender grass several dozen-odd zhang away still caught his attention.
"Concealment Art." Andy cast the low-grade spell on himself. A pulse of spiritual light wrapped around his body, flickered several times, and he vanished into the mountain forest. It was a crude technique—effective only against ordinary mortals, and any nearby cultivator could see straight through it with a simple Spiritual Eye Art—but for his present purposes it was enough. With the Concealment Art active, Andy moved easily to within two or three zhang of the grey-furred rabbit without disturbing it. Then he released a small fireball, striking the ground about two chi to the rabbit's side. The blast left a shallow crater half a chi deep, and the rabbit, still completely unaware of what had happened and still gnawing at its grass stalk, was killed instantly by the shockwave.
That miniature fireball was just the right size—any bigger and I'd have burned dinner to a crisp. Andy picked up the rabbit with a satisfied look, and his thoughts moved on: I really should put more practice into controlling magical artifacts. It would make hunting a lot easier. And the books all say the cultivation world is a place where the strong prey on the weak—even more dangerous than the mortal world. More means of protecting myself is never a bad thing.
He blasted a small pit with a Fireball, wrapped the rabbit in leaves, set it inside, packed dirt over it, and laid seven or eight arm-thick branches across the top. With a soft hiss, a flame the size of a soybean gathered at his fingertip. He flicked it onto the branches, and they burst into fierce, immediate combustion—within moments, all seven or eight had burned to ash. Spiritual fire really is something else—such power, and somewhat tricky to control. The soil should be hot enough by now. Give it about half an hour and the rabbit should be braised through. Might as well use the time to practice controlling the artifact.
He reached into his beast-hide pouch and drew out a blade-shaped artifact. The blade was roughly three cun long, about a cun wide, with an extremely short handle—the whole thing no bigger than a palm—and emanated a faint blue glow across its entire surface. It was a low-grade magical artifact, though Andy had given it an impressively grand name: the Immortal-Slaying Blade. The clan had presented it to him when he reached the fourth layer of Qi Refinement, and it was currently the only magical artifact he owned.
Andy slowly channeled spiritual power from his palm into the blade while wrapping his spiritual sense around the entire length of it. The blade hummed softly and rose into the air. Controlling a magical artifact—the Art of Artifact Command—was a common technique among cultivators, a means of manipulating objects at a distance. It required both a steady flow of spiritual power into the artifact to establish a link, and the use of one's spiritual sense to direct the artifact's every movement.
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"Go!" Andy gave the command while vividly picturing in his mind the blade sweeping forward. Sure enough, the Immortal-Slaying Blade flashed forward in a streak of blue light, covering five or six zhang in the blink of an eye. "Return!" He sent the next command through his mind. The blade seemed almost reluctant—it trembled and shook for a moment before slowly turning and drifting back to hover in front of him. Looks like I can only control it reliably within three or four zhang of me for now. Beyond that range, the handling gets shaky. This was Andy's assessment. He had practiced the Art of Artifact Command seven or eight times since receiving the blade, and had finally reached the point where he could manage it competently at close range. He ran through several more passes, testing both the maximum distance before he lost reliable control and the precision of close-range maneuvering.
About half an hour later, a rich aroma began rising from the packed earth. Andy set down the blade. He ate both rabbit legs and was full. Picking up a banana leaf roughly a chi and a half across, he cast Rain-Summoning Art—countless tiny water droplets condensed in the air above his palm, fell as a light drizzle onto the leaf, and before long it was brimming. He drank several deep gulps with a contented expression, then clambered up the branches of a nearby pine, easily hauling himself hand over foot to a comfortable height, and settled into a suitable spot to spend the night. He must have been more tired than he realized, because sleep came quickly. In his dreams he shifted between one scene and another—his past life, bent over a scroll in studious concentration; himself as a small child, learning spells alongside a crowd of other children, dazzled by the brilliant flashes of spiritual light; and then his early years in the valley, with Jian Xin'er trailing after him every day like a shadow, endlessly pestering him for another story.
A howl that rang through the entire forest jolted Andy from his sleep.
He sat up at once and looked toward the sound. In the light of the moon, he could just make out the blurry shape of a large animal with black and white stripes moving unhurriedly in his direction. He channeled spiritual power into his eyes and focused the Spiritual Eye Art on the creature for a careful look, then let out a quiet breath of relief—it was an ordinary beast, without so much as a trace of spiritual power. He settled back on his branch and waited patiently for the animal to approach. Unless he was mistaken, the smell of the leftover roasted rabbit had drawn it here.
When the beast had closed to two or three hundred zhang, the moonlight filtering through the branches gave Andy a clear enough view to make out its appearance—and he drew in a quiet breath. It was over a zhang in length, white-furred with bold black stripes running across its body. It looked remarkably like the creature of legend—a white tiger.
Well now. Andy felt a hunter's excitement stir in him. In his memory, a white tiger carried special significance—legend held that those who encountered and brought one down were men destined for greatness. Here he was, only one day out on his journey, and already such an omen. Was fortune smiling on what lay ahead? It was precisely because he was a cultivator that he could afford to think this way. An ordinary mortal who caught sight of this creature would have gone weak at the knees on the spot.
The unlucky white tiger had evidently not yet noticed Andy's presence, still padding steadily forward toward the source of that enticing meat smell. Then a streak of blue light burst from the pine tree, a small blade only a few cun long flying straight at the tiger with tremendous speed, reaching its flank in an instant. Despite its great size, the white tiger was startlingly agile—it lunged forward, pulling its body clear of the blue light, and at the same moment swept its long tail in a powerful arc at the blade. That iron-hard tail, swinging with full force, could have snapped a tree the width of a forearm in two.
But the blue light was completely unaffected. It severed the tail clean off, then changed direction and drove straight for the tiger's underbelly—so fast the tiger had no chance to dodge. A shriek of pain rang out, and the white tiger was split open from head to tail along its underside. It collapsed and died instantly, blood and entrails spreading across the ground.
"Immortal-Slaying Blade!" Andy retrieved the blade with great satisfaction after its first real combat success. He paused for a moment, then sent the blade out again, carefully guiding it to skin the white tiger, working inch by inch around the entire hide. Such precise control demanded an enormous amount from his spiritual sense. By the time the full hide was removed, his head was swimming—clearly from pushing his spiritual sense too hard. He put the Immortal-Slaying Blade away, left the tiger hide where it lay without bothering to sort it out, climbed back up the pine tree, and fell straight into a deep sleep.