Chapter 45: Bracelet (6)

Their hunting party set out the next day bright and early. Everybody involved seemed to be in good spirits. Muchen had some butterflies in his stomach, but did his best to put a good face on things. For his part, Shuchang seemed as chipper as ever. The act of leading a small party into the dangerous wilderness obviously didn't lay heavily on his shoulders. Muchen hoped that his confidence was founded on something besides youthful exuberance.

He also hoped that the first monster of the day, at least, wouldn't single him out for an ambush attack. The further they marched away from their camp, the less confidence Muchen had in the whole endeavor.

"Nervous?" Shuchang asked, giving Muchen a pat on the shoulder. The two of them were trailing behind the other group of four.

"A little," Muchen admitted. "I've never gone looking for trouble like this before."

"Don't worry," Shuchang said, "everybody's nervous on their first hunt. This place still gives me the creeps and I practically live out here."

Muchen smiled and nodded, his movements a little tight. He appreciated the effort, but it wasn't that reassuring to know that even Shuchang was hiding at least a little bit of nerves.

"Look, you wouldn't have gotten so far in your cultivation if you gave up at the first sign of trouble," Shuchang continued. "Just stick with me and you'll be fine."

Muchen nodded again. To be honest, while he'd had his own personal ups and downs since arriving on the Qianzhan Continent, his cultivation had always progressed relatively smoothly. He'd only had the one hiccup in the capital, and that had only lasted for a day or so. An optimist would say that Muchen must have great natural talent. A pessimist would observe that he'd never been tested.

Either way, he had every intention of sticking close to the more experienced hunters as they made their way through the wilderness. Even Xinyi had spoken of the place with caution. Muchen had no interest in wandering off on his own to try to strike it rich.

He already had his business started and, he hoped, growing steadily back at Li Village. He had a cultivation technique that would see him clear through to the Golden Core stage. There was no need to put his life on the line seeking a fortuitous encounter.

"Just remember, whatever you do, don't get greedy," Shuchang said. "More often than not, if you see a prize all out of proportion to the effort you've put in, it's a trap of some kind."

Muchen smiled as his guide echoed his own thoughts. "That's true most places."

Shuchang laughed. "I suppose it is. Out here the sting in the tail tends to be more direct, though."

Muchen took another look around the forest. As far as he could tell, there was nothing nearby waiting to jump out and try to kill him. The farther north they traveled, the more the hair on the back of his arms stood up. Something about their surroundings just seemed wrong, even if he couldn't pin down exactly what it was. Some sense he'd developed or some primitive survival instinct was trying to get him to turn around and head back the way he came.

Muchen reached down and took a solid grip on his knife, but refused to slow his stride. If everybody just followed their instincts all the time humans would never have gotten beyond the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Whatever his gut tried to tell him, he already knew about the risks and had made an informed decision.

They continued onward until the sun was high in the sky. Muchen was just considering whether he wanted to be the one to bring up the idea of a lunch break when there was a commotion up ahead.

The four man vanguard split up and spread out, bringing their weapons to bear. Two of them were carrying spears, while the other two had heavy two-handed swords. The reason for their alarm soon became apparent as a monster reared up out of the tall grass.

Muchen didn't have a name for the thing in front of him other than monster. It was shaped like a centipede, but scaled up to almost twice the size of a grown man. Its face was strange, the insectoid lines warping into a weird parody of a fox's head, its fur replaced by chitin and the whole thing scaled up to fit the monster's proportions.

It let out a chittering shriek and charged at the pair of men on the left. Muchen wasn't sure if it had the tactical insight to know it should escape the encirclement, or if it was just following its aggressive instincts. Either way, he drew his knife and stepped forward, only to be held back by a hand on his shoulder.

"They can handle one beast just fine," Shuchang said.

Muchen nodded and had just started to relax when Shuchang continued.

"Remember what I said about easy prizes, though."

Muchen pulled himself straight and looked around, weapon at the ready. He hadn't thought of a monster encounter as a lucky opportunity, but the whole point of the hunt was to find monsters to kill. If all of their targets were considerate enough to come at them one at a time, the northern wastes would hardly have established such a fearsome reputation.

The spearman being targeted by the monster fended off its initial charge. The team it had turned its back on had already begun to close in. The sudden initial attack had bought the monster a moment of freedom, but in the end it wasn't going to be able to avoid the fate of being surrounded and hacked to pieces.

Muchen tore his eyes away from the fight. There was no need to spectate on a foregone conclusion. Instead he needed to keep an eye out for any new threats. He did his best to survey the area, but the only thing he confirmed was that Shuchang was already looking out for danger.

Maybe sometimes you just got lucky. The sound of the battle was disorienting at first, but as it progressed Muchen was able to separate out the clanging sound of the beast's attacks bouncing off armor from the click of the monster's own armor fending off an attack and the wet thud of a strike hitting home on the thing's vulnerable flesh.

The four man team had matters well in hand, but a single slip up could still easily result in tragedy. Muchen was relieved when the monster started to slow down. It had lost a lot of blood and was clearly on its last legs. It had a lot of last legs. It also had the unnatural vitality of a spirit beast, able to keep going when a human would have long since given up the battle as hopeless.

It feinted an attack towards one of the swordsmen, then reared back up to its full height. The pose made Muchen think it was about to unleash an elemental attack. Instead, it leaned its head back and shrieked. The sound was unnervingly close to a human scream. One of the swordsmen launched himself forward. He brought his sword around in a powerful, reckless strike. The monster made no move to avoid it. The shriek cut off with a wet gurgle as the blow hit home, crumpling the top half of the monster's skull.

Muchen swore he could still hear the shriek echoing off of the trees around him in the eerie silence that followed. He was relieved to have come out of his first battle unscathed. Even if calling it his first battle was stretching things a bit, at least he had seen blood in the northern wastelands.

"We need to move," Shuchang said. "Now."

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Muchen looked at him in surprise. After a fight, the hunting team was supposed to harvest the most valuable parts of whatever they killed. Depending on what it was, they would either mark its location to be recovered later or work out a way to carry the whole body along with them.

"That distress call will have its whole family coming after us," Shuchang said. He brought his thumb and forefinger to his mouth and gave a piercing whistle of his own. The team in front looked back and began to jog towards them when Shuchang waved them over. Judging by the grim expression on their faces, they knew the danger they were in.

"We'll head back to the camp. If we make it, all well and good," Shuchang said. "Otherwise, there was some good defensive terrain about ten minutes south of here."

"The clearing?" Muchen asked, falling into step as they began their retreat.

Shuchang nodded.

Human armies would have considered flat ground to be neutral at best, maybe even favoring the attacker. Muchen considered the mass of angry giant centipede-fox monsters they could soon be facing. With their build, they'd be able to climb trees as easily as they walked on level ground. He shuddered. Fighting a whole group in the forest would be a nightmare.

The group fell into a steady jog. They had a lot of ground to cover before they got to favorable terrain, and they would need to fight once they got there. Sprinting wouldn't do them any good.

Muchen told himself that, but he couldn't help but pick up the pace a bit every time he heard a chittering scream off in the distance behind them. And more so when the scream wasn't as far in the distance as it used to be. It soon became clear that they were going to have to stand and fight before they made it back to camp.

Since the group had reversed directions, Muchen and Shuchang were now leading the way. Fortunately, any local wildlife that wanted to mess with them had either been flushed out by their earlier trek or scared away by the angry screeches that continued spurring their group on. Muchen still had to keep a wary eye out to make sure of where he was putting his feet. This would be a terrible time to turn an ankle.

It had taken them about ten minutes to cover the ground from the clearing to where they had met the monster. Muchen wasn't clocking their return trip, but it couldn't have been more than five minutes from when they started to flee to when they began preparing to make their stand.

They huddled in the middle of the clear area. It was decently sized, but not enormous. Maybe about half the size of a football field back on earth. Although the lack of trees meant that they wouldn't have to worry about being attacked from above, the wild grass had grown up almost to Muchen's thigh. Not quite high enough to hide one of those monsters completely, but it would make them hard to spot.

"All right, we need to keep eyes on all sides," Shuchang said. "Keep them from closing in and we'll finish them off."

The other four nodded and arranged themselves in a square surrounding Muchen and Shuchang. Muchen tucked his knife under his arm and wiped his palm off on his shirt, then re-set his grip. He'd fought before, but this was the first time that he'd have teammates counting on him.

"Will they try to surround us?" Muchen asked.

"They shouldn't be that smart," Shuchang said, "but sometimes they act like it. They don't think, exactly, but their instinct is to try to find a weak spot to attack."

Muchen nodded. He wanted to ask for more instructions, to hit on one weird trick that would turn the tide of battle, but in the end this was a simple problem. Just kill the monsters once the others opened up the opportunity. He tried to come up with a quip to take his mind off the tension in his gut, but before he could say anything he was cut off by the arrival of their pursuers.

They came pouring into the clearing, their bodies writhing together in what looked like one big ball of chitin and rage. As they advanced into the clearing they separated, spreading out as Shuchang had predicted to attack from multiple angles. There were six of them, as best Muchen could tell.

"Steady now," Shuchang said. Around them, the others made some last minute adjustments to their stance, settling in for battle.

The two monsters approaching from the front reached them first. The man guarding that side swiped his spear at the face of one of them before stabbing out at the other. The first monster shied away, while the other reared back. The spear struck with a clack at first, but he leaned his body into the thrust and the spear slid up the armor plate to slide home in its soft flesh.

"Go!" Shuchang called out, his command barely audible over the monsters' screams.

Muchen surged forward when Shuchang did. He was only dimly aware as Shuchang peeled away to fend off the free beast. He kept his eyes focused on the monster that was stuck on the end of a spear. It snapped forward, the segments of its body above the spear undulating as it tried to latch its jaw onto its target. The spearman wasn't having it, using his weapon to control its body and shifting himself out of the way of its desperate attacks.

Muchen closed the distance quickly and had only half a heartbeat to consider his target. He glanced at the head for only a split second before winding up and getting his body into a strike aimed just above where the spear entered into the monster's body.

It would be nice to slice through a vulnerability in the monster's defense, but the most important thing was to strike true. With its head lashing back and forth, Muchen preferred an easier target.

He forced spiritual energy to his arm, his shoulder, and his hips. It was sluggish, as always. Cultivators usually didn't start consciously moving their spiritual energy until they'd finished opening all of their meridians and started building their foundation. Manipulating it while still in the middle of opening meridians was fiendishly difficult. But that didn't mean it was impossible.

Muchen had suffered through months of hellish training just for this moment. While the spiritual energy didn't leap to his command, it did move. The adrenaline pumping through his body helped, as did the focus brought on by knowing that a mistake could easily lead to his death.

The saber exploded forward, cutting through the air with a ripping noise like tearing cloth before burying itself into the monster's body. He smashed through its chitinous shell and halfway through the meat of it in a burst of black ichor.

Muchen grinned in satisfaction, then was almost thrown from his feet as the monster whipped itself backwards. He took a stumbling step forward, then braced himself and ripped the knife free. More ichor gushed forth. The monster's movements slowed down. Its death was near.

Muchen took another step forward, intent on finishing the thing off. A warning shout from behind gave him just enough time to get his weapon up between himself and a sudden attack.

He'd almost forgotten. They weren't fighting one monster, they were fighting a whole team.

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