As the group travel through the forest, Fan Cheng and Fan Zhi continued to converse.
Fan Cheng was attempting to teach Fan Zhi everything he could about forest survival.
He had received some unsettling news before he left, so he wanted to make sure that Fan Zhi's possibilities of survival were as high as he could make it.
Fan Zhi was absorbing the information like a sponge.
Soul cultivation arts always had a side-effect of assisting with memory and intuition which greatly helped Fan Zhi's learning.
Soon, a week and a half had flown by with the forest as silent as ever.
Fan Cheng was clearly anxious now; the forest was never silent for so long unless the demonic beasts had been removed from the area.
The rest of the group had sensed Fan Cheng's apprehension and the entire group was now silently travelling.
It was halfway through the second week of travel in the forest that the attack came.
Someone had stepped on a twig, making a loud and echoing noise in the reticent atmosphere.
Suddenly, the twang of a few dozen bows resounds out, causing birds to take to the skies and arrows to fly like the wind.
"GET DOWN!"
Fan Cheng shouts, waving his hand and surrounding the group in a current of wind; attempting to divert the arrows.
However, the arrows flew through the barrier through unimpeded due to being made of metal.
When he saw this scene Fan Cheng slammed his hand on the ground hurriedly.
When his hand touched the ground, a wall of darkness expanded out of Fan Cheng and absorbed the arrows; harmlessly passing through his clansmen.
The group of Fan clansmen then jumped up, ready to fight off the ambushers.
They two sides stood in silence for a few minutes.
Then, slowly the ambushers walk forward and reveal themselves.
The group sucks in a breath at the almost 3 dozen cultivators of the Gale Hawk Village surrounding them.
Each cultivator has a longbow and quiver full of metal arrows imbued with poison.
When Fan Cheng sees the person in the lead, his face turns pale.
"You… Why is the leader of the Gale Hawk Village out here and not with your group heading to the tournament?!"
"Hahaha… Well you see, I made a deal with the Fierce Tiger Tribe. If I take you out or at least hold you here for a day, your clan dies and we split the land and profits equally."
The man in question was a thin man with smooth skin and feminine features.
He was the leader of Gale Hawk Village, commonly known as Viper.
This was because he had the bloodline of the sky viper, giving him the wind attribute and the rare poison attribute.
Any arrow he fired had the ability to kill anyone who was weaker than him, the poison qi he imbues in his arrows being highly toxic.
Fan Cheng's face turned red with rage when he heard Viper's words.
"Heh, my Clan's territory may be destroyed but what gives you the confidence to kill me, filthy snake?"
Viper's face contorted when he heard Fan Cheng's words.
He called himself Viper because he believed that the bloodline of the Sky Viper was a noble and powerful bloodline, not some filthy snake you find lying in the sun.
Drawing his bow, Viper began to fire arrows that glowed a sickly green towards Fan Cheng.
When Viper's group saw him beginning to attack, they all started to open fire at the Fan Clan's group.
The Fan Clan retaliated, causing a bloody battle to begin in the forest.
Fan Cheng charged towards Viper like a beam of light. Viper, seeing his charge immediately was surrounded by wind and moving around.
Fan Cheng similarily surrounded himself in wind and gave chase.
No matter how many arrows Viper fired, Fan Cheng had dodged or deflected them with one of the pair of long daggers he had drawn as he charged.
Fan Cheng soon caught up to Viper, sending dozens of quick attacks towards him with blades of wind being launched from the tips of the daggers as he did so.
Viper countered by spinning his bow like a staff, causing a cyclone of wind to destroy Fan Cheng's attacks and deflect his daggers if they got to close.
Immediately after Fan Cheng's assault stopped, Viper waved his right arm and half a dozen throwing daggers came out of his sleeves.
The metal objects were tinted a sickly green colour, clearly indicating the imbuement of poison in their making.
Poison imbuement was a specialty of the Gale Hawk Village, allowing their arrows to poison anything they touch.
Most of the Gale Hawk Village were immune to such poison; the ones that weren't used special clothing made to prevent them from getting poisoned.
After deflecting the throwing daggers, Fan Cheng smirked.
"Heh, is that all you got? A measly Heavenly Foundation Pupil like you can't do anything to me. The only dangerous thing is your poison, but obviously, you can't even get a scratch on me."
Hearing his words, Viper simply smiled slightly in return.
Replying in a similar fashion, Viper's words made Fan Cheng's smirk disappear.
"Heh, who said I was alone?"
"ROOAR!!!"
A large brown tiger with red stripes and someone riding it sprung out of the trees behind Fan Cheng.
Turning around reflexively, Fan Cheng quickly rolled underneath the tiger and stabbed it through the heart.
The tiger started turning black, writhing in pain.
The rider of the tiger quickly jumped off his mount, his war hammer descending upon the head of Fan Cheng.
Still maintaining a calm poise, Fan Cheng smoothly leapt up and leaned to one side.
The hammer's path was strangely diverting to barely miss Fan Cheng, slamming into the ground with an explosion of sharp shards of the earth due to the strong force behind the swing.
Any shards that were about to hurt Fan clansmen were consumed by darkness, disappearing upon contact.
Smiling lightly, Fan Cheng walks back a few steps from Chief and readied himself for an intense fight.
"Ahhh Chief. How nice to see you…? I take it that you made an agreement with Viper? I am honestly surprised; how could you guess that Viper wasn't strong enough?"
The large muscular silhouette was quickly identified to be Chief, leader of the Fierce Tiger Tribe by Fan Cheng.
Lifting his hammer, Chief hefted it onto his right shoulder lightly, creating a loud explosion of noise upon the hammer's contact with his shoulder.
"Yeah, I did… He may have the poison attribute, but he is still only a Heavenly Foundation Pupil. He isn't a Heavenly Foundation Warrior yet."
Fan Cheng's smile grew wider in response to Chief's words.
"True. I guess if you guys work together; you would have been able to kill me three years ago. After all, your powers work quite well together. Unfortunately for you two, your estimation of my strength is based upon the fight three years ago."
As he was speaking, the aura of Fan Cheng was slowly growing.
Chief and Viper's faces were turning pale at the same rate as Fan Cheng's power was being revealed.
Soon after, Fan Cheng's power hit its peak; but not before it bumped up in quality.
"You...! You broke through to become a Heavenly Foundation Champion!"
Chief's voiced quivered slightly.
Fan Cheng had always been the most powerful of the trio, but that only meant that he wouldn't need to take any injuries in a stalemate and he could flee as he would like from them.
However, now that he had broken through since the last time they fought, almost 3 years ago, Fan Cheng was now strong enough to kill them.
Quickly activating his qi to enhance himself, Chief prepared for a battle that would likely result in only the victorious surviving.
Chief was a tri-element cultivator of water, metal and earth which happened to be the 3 best attributes known among all the types of qi that had the ability to enhance the body.
This perfectly matched the properties of his bloodline, which restricted the use of qi outside the body for people of the Fierce Tiger Village until they broke through into the Formation Domain.
Fan Cheng, on the other hand, was a tri-attribute cultivator of light, dark and wind.
This combination had very good utility usage, but Chief knew that none of those attributes would be able to penetrate his defences even though Fan Cheng was stronger.
Atleast, to his knowledge.
"Alright everyone, SCATTER!"
Fan Cheng shouted as he charged towards Chief with a flash of light.
Chief quickly swung his war hammer sideways in an attempt to dissuade Fan Cheng from continuing his charge.
Sliding on the floor, Fan Cheng went under the swing and got up with his left hand glowing brightly.
Chief smirked in derision at Fan Cheng's bright dagger, simply raising his war hammer for a heavy downward swing.
However, Chief didn't notice the slight smile of Fan Cheng as his dagger went through Chief's heart, his hand soon following.
Stiffening, Chief dropped his hammer, dying within a few seconds of his heart getting pulverized.
Chief had not known about one of the main properties of the light attribute, which Fan Cheng had never shown intentionally.
The light attribute had three main properties; a strong purifying power, an extreme speed with no flexibility to it and extreme penetrative power.
Fan Cheng has shown the first two properties of the light attribute quite often, but has never shown the last one; mainly due to the fact that he never needed to show it due to his wind and dark attributes usually being enough for offensive power in combat.
Fan Cheng was the first person to have ever had the light and the dark attributes in any of the three groups, so he knew that the other two leaders of their respective powers would have no idea on any of the properties of those two attributes that he didn't reveal.
Relying on this knowledge, Fan Cheng was able to stab the heart of Chief with ease due to Chief's overconfidence in his bodily defence.
As he killed Chief, Fan Cheng twisted his body in a weird shape and took an arrow to his right shoulder.
Looking at the arrow, Fan Cheng's face soon paled from the incredibly potent poison that was delivered by the arrow.
Viper had not only imbued his strongest poison into the arrow, but he had also filled the arrow with as much poison qi as possible.
This exponentially strengthened the poison imbued into the arrow, the poison qi acting as an enhancer.
The incredibly high quantity of poison and wind qi imbued into arrow caused Viper to be left quite weak afterwards.
This all-or-nothing move by Viper had caught Fan Cheng unaware as he had simply assumed that the arrow was like any previously fired arrow from Viper.
Knowing that not even his light attributes purifying power could counter poison of this calibre, Fan Cheng turned into a beam of light as he ran through the trees.
As the remaining ambusher's attempted to follow, Viper held up his hand and stopped them.
"Don't bother, he is dead anyway. He could easily get far enough away before the poison weakens him enough to force him to stop that it would take us a few days to catch up. No point, he is doomed to die and that's all we needed to happen."
* * * * *
Fan Zhi was running hard, dodging through trees to dodge the arrows of the ambushers following him.
They were all stronger than him at the moment and although he could likely beat them in a fight, he was worried about the poison imbued in the arrows.
From what Fan Zhi had seen earlier, he knew that the poison was potent enough to kill a Sky Foundation Pupil.
If that kind of poison even scratched Fan Zhi, he would probably die in under a minute.
His Sacred Elemental Body did nothing to stop things like poison, although the natural purification powers of the light attribute and the burning powers of the fire attribute that naturally are within his every cell could counteract the poison to at least slow it down for a few minutes.
However, the poison was far too potent to be stopped by a cultivator of the lowest realm no matter what attribute he cultivated.
Suddenly, Fan Zhi heard the sounds of a blade slicing flesh behind him.
Looking back as he ran, Fan Zhi saw Fan Cheng running to catch up to him, blood dripping down his remaining dagger.
Quickly arriving next to Fan Zhi, Fan Cheng hoisted Fan Zhi onto his back without a word and used his light element to run as fast as he could.
Fan Zhi couldn't even say a word, the wind in his face was too strong to allow him to even breathe without a lot of difficulties, let alone speak.
Resigned to being a sack of potatoes for an indeterminate period of time, Fan Zhi closed his eyes and rested.