Shi heard Hikaru approaching and held his breath, completely sealing off his mana presence as he did so. As the footsteps came closer, Shi started to panic, but he kept a tight hold on his mana and waited. After what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, Shi heard the footsteps heading away from him.
Shi silently released the breath he had been holding and started taking in mana slowly. He made sure to disguise his draw so that Hikaru wouldn't notice it with any mana sense he might be using but in order to do that Shi had to slow down his absorption.
After a half-hour or so, Shi heard a bunch of footsteps outside his cave. Thinking that Hikaru must have brought in more people to search, Shi increased his mana draw. After a while longer, Shi had restocked his mana.
That done, Shi started expanding his cave down and back towards Kyushu. It was slow work since he had to hide his mana expenditure but Shi kept at it. After a while, Shi had dug the hole down by a good bit so he filled in the initial cave, leaving a tiny gap for air to come through.
Shi continued on, filling in the area behind him as he went. After another hour or two, he heard explosions behind him. Shi started using more mana to make his tunnel while refilling it behind him to get away from the blast zone.
After the series of explosions ended, Shi slowed his pace again, keeping himself hidden from any prying senses. Behind him, a thunderous boom that could have only come from Hikaru's lightning attack rang out. "Someone's getting desperate," Shi muttered before continuing his underground travel.
Another massive explosion sounded out behind Shi, shaking the tunnel he was in. Shi sped up the pace of his travel, trying to keep out of Hikaru's range. The explosions kept on behind Shi, slowly catching up to him.
Shi switched his focus to traveling downwards, trying to dig under Hikaru's blasts. Eventually, the explosions faded away, and Shi collapsed to the ground, panting. Shi wiped off the sweat that was pouring down his face from his previous panic and focused on recovering some mana.
As he sat there recovering mana, Shi started to think about his situation. He had been a fool, thinking himself better than everyone else. He could have easily spent some time preparing himself and his army before marching right into his enemy's trap.
This was nothing more than an error in judgment however, the real problem was that Shi lost to Hikaru. He had lost because he was weak, he needed strength. Shi couldn't do anything to save his men at this point so he worked his way towards the main island, going the opposite direction of his territory.
After a while, Shi emerged from the ground on the main island. He worked his way back to the ruined landscape where he had fought Hikaru before. The entire area was reduced to nothing but a crater, with no signs of life within it.
Shi turned away from the destruction and headed towards the main island. After a while, he came upon a town. Shi quickly washed with water magic before drying himself with some fire magic. Clean, Shi went into town, keeping his head down as he did. As he walked through the streets, he saw some wanted signs on some of the walls bearing his face.
Shi lowered his head even further and headed to a clothing store. He bought multiple pairs of hooded clothes that were loose enough to fight in and a piece of red cloth with all the money he had on him from the store, taking care to not show his face for an extended period of time.
After purchasing the clothes, Shi quickly changed in an alley before making his way out of the town, keeping his face hidden under his hood. After he got out of town, Shi wrapped the strip of red cloth around his eyes, blinding himself.
Shi turned on his mana senses, relying only on them to guide him as he headed deeper into the main island. As Shi traveled, he got more used to using his mana senses. After a few weeks of only using his mana senses, Shi became confident enough to start attempting to create a new spell, a disguise.
As Shi attempted to balance his mana senses with consciously manipulating his mana to figure out how to disguise himself, he tripped multiple times. After months of travel, and plenty of bruises from tripping and falling over and over, Shi figured out how to disguise himself.
Shi covered himself in a sheen of mana, manipulating it to form a figure about 6 feet tall, with a square jaw, brown eyes, and short black hair with a closely cropped black beard. Shi practiced keeping his disguise up as he went out to hunt some food.
Shi tracked down a bear with his mana senses and headed towards it. Shi charged the bear, activating war cry while keeping his other two spells going. The bear attacked Shi, but Shi ducked to the side, barely avoiding the bear's paw, before ducking in close to the bear's front and uppercutting the bear right in its jaw.
The bear head exploded, sending a small shockwave throughout the forest around Shi. Shi stopped his war cry and got to work skinning the bear, making sure to keep his disguise up as he did so. Once the bear was cleaned and ready, Shi made camp and started cooking.
Once the food started cooking over the fire, Shi brought out his bird summon and sent it into the air. Shi had it search the area until it found a relatively large town. Shi marked the town's location in his mind before releasing his bird summon.
After he ate, Shi stood up and started heading towards the town, it was time to start training.