"Boss there's something on the horizon moving really, really fast!."
"What? Is it a carriage? Yaroslav! The roadblock!" Shouted the Captain as he climbed up the makeshift scouting tower.
"Roger!" Shouted the bear-like man in the thickest Russian accent.
"Boss Wang, whatever it is, it's moving too fast! It'll break the barricade!"
Now in the scout tower, the Captain takes Juan's telescope and sees a small silhouette moving at intense speeds creating large clouds of smoke.
"You're right Juan. There's no way we can stop whatever that is. Slav! Remove the barricade!"
Yaroslav grunted and began dragging it back out of the way.
"WAIT!" Shouted Wang. "That thing! It's destroying the road! It's destroying the fucking road! Yaroslav put the barricade back!"
"Boss! We can't stop that monster, it's going too fast!"
"Look again through the telescope Juan! That thing's creating holes in the road!
"Kakogo khrena! Make up your fucking minds!" Shouted Yaroslav clearly fed up with their nonsense.
Wang looked at Juan. "Listen, we spent months fixing this whole road! And now some asshole is gonna destroy it all in one walk-through? Not on my watch! Hakim! Reinforce the barricade!"
"Understood," said the deep voice of the 6'7 goliath lying under a nearby tree.
Hakim tightened his durag and sat up underneath the shade of the tree. A mysterious foggy grey Qi emitted from his body.
His ebony skin was draped in sunlight as the tree behind him was uprooted by the grey smoke. 20 more trees behind him did the same. With a wave of his hand, he sent them all to fall behind the barricade Yaroslav had put in place.
"Perfect! Good job boys!" Said Wang as he took another look through the telescope.
"He's going too fast, I've tried waving at him but he doesn't react at all. We won't be able to warn him verbally to stop."
"Unfortunate." Said Wang putting his hand on Juan's shoulder and handing him the telescope. "45 seconds before impact! Non-combatants return to camp! Lads, let's get ready to engage!" He shouted in a more authoritative voice.
Juan got down from the scout tower and joined the group of crewmates who had already left.
Yaroslav and the other warriors brandished their weapons.
At that moment something burst through the barricade sending the trees flying.
"Bandit's huh?" said a young boy's voice. The silhouette of his bizarre small body was barely visible in the cloud of kick-up dirt made of the broken road parts.
"No way? You're a child!?" exclaimed Wang.
"Let's get this over with. People like you are the most annoying." said the boy apathetically.
In an instant, he vanished and reappeared with his arm through Yaroslav's chest.
"What!?" Wang's eye's couldn't believe what they were seeing. He immediately slashed down with his sword unleashing a long-range water Qi attack, but the child disappeared before the attack connected.
"Slav!" shouted Captain Wang as he ran over to catch him. The child's arm had completely pierced through his chest, though it was a small child's arm the wound was still sizable.
"You stay with me now Yaro. We're going to patch you up. I need you to stay awake. Do you understand!" Yaroslav looked his captain in the eyes and nodded with a groan, but his eyes suddenly widened as he saw the child standing behind Wang.
The child wasted no time and aimed for Wang's head.
However, in the split second before the child's hand reached Wang's head, heavy grey smoke engulfed the kid slamming him to the ground.
"Djorn!" Shouted Wang at the top of his lungs "Get him to Hassan NOW!" In that same moment, he spun around slashing downwards onto the child, who caught the blade with his hand glowing golden, suddenly nullifying all the strength the Captain had put into the attack. A clanging sound resonated throughout Wang's entire body, the recoil temporarily stopping him from even thinking let alone moving.
"Shit!" Said Wang as Djorn ran passed him with Yaroslav in his arms.
The child suddenly grew twice as large. He stood up with the sword's blade in his hand and buried his fist in Wang's face, sending him flying.
The child then took his sword by the handle and sliced up the smoke dispersing it.
"So you're a Qi arts user. Are you a disciple of one of the 9 sects?" said the child as he turned toward Hakim.
"Does it matter?" answered Hakim with a furious look on his face. replied Hakim.
"You seem a bit too skilled to just be a bandit. If you are, I'd like to ask you a few questions." the kid disappeared again. "But that can wait until after I take care of you all."
Hakim was an experienced fighter. Even when he wasn't in a fight he got used to spreading a small amount of smoke around him so he would be aware of the location of everything around him even with his eyes closed.
However, it doesn't matter if you know where they are if they've already moved by the time you react. Even with Hakim's ability, keeping track of the demonic child was impossible. So he acted based on everything he'd seen up until then.
Hakim spun around expecting an attack from behind… but no one was there. He was forced to rely on his ability despite knowing it would be too late. He looked up to see the child land on him from above.
At that moment Hakim's instincts kicked in and his whole body violently reacted putting his Qi into hyperdrive.
The child's fist phased through him and slammed into the ground causing cracks to appear around them. The confused child, now extremely muscly and much taller than before, looked at his fist confused as he pulled it out of the crater.
He locked eyes with hakim as his body crackled and popped into a different shape.
"Wha- What are you?" shouted Hakim terrified.
"That should be my question."
The kid instantly appeared next to Hakim and punched through his face. It exploded into a cloud of smoke.
"Interesting," said the kid. He then immediately whipped his neck back to avoid a knife that shot out from behind the cloud of fog.
"You're not acting so tough now are ya? You muppet!" a silhouette of a man holding multiple knives appeared behind the mist that had now engulfed all the surroundings.
The child barely twisted his body in time to avoid a knife coming from behind him. It was without a doubt the knife he had just avoided. This confused the boy. He now wore a complicated expression.
"Come here you little fucking runt and I'll butcher you myself!" The silhouette threw all of its knives before completely vanishing.
The child ran past most of them in order to try find the mysterious man, but no matter where he went he found another knife waiting for him. As if the knives were hunting him as a group. He started to find it hard to keep up, he received multiple cuts while avoiding both Hakim's attacks and the knives.
However, the perplexed expression on the child was not because of this predicament. It was because he had never seen such martial arts before. The main issue was that he did not understand how the technique worked.
The only technique he had witnessed that he was familiar with was the sword Qi the Captain used at the start of the fight.
This entire time the child was attempting to imitate the bizarre martial arts he was witnessing. He didn't understand how Qi could become smoke, or how the knives were being manipulated.
Wouldn't manipulating weapons in such a way require covering the item in Qi? But such a technique was clearly not being used.
A normal marital artist would manifest pure Qi outside their body. They then use their profound knowledge of a specific element to turn the pure Qi into elemental Qi. This means the Qi will change colour and form, like the blue fluidity of water Qi, to grey immovable metal Qi.
What the child was slowly beginning to realise was that during the time between his death and his reincarnation… The world's martial arts had improved without him.
New techniques with weaknesses he remains oblivious to now dominate the world of martial arts. If he wanted to keep up he would need to adapt to this new environment.
No matter how much he parried and avoided the knives, more kept coming. No matter how much he sliced up the Qi fog, more was produced.
What was the trick behind this? How did such mysterious powers work?
A sense of excitement began to possess the child. More than pain, more than sleeping, this was the only place where he could forget all his misfortune.
He forgot about what awaited him in reality and for the first time since his reincarnation he reached the state of flow or as some may call it 'Tao'.
The most sensational state of mind, free from doubt, distraction, and uncertainty. The perfect state to ignore all your problems, one where you act without thought.
With a demonic smile, the child adapted to the attack patterns of his two enemies. Though one of them had remained elusive, the way the knives moved implied that the user relied on their sight. They were most likely high up where they could see everything clearly.
The child had tried several different methods to attempt to deal with the knives themselves: Catching them? But he could only hold so many. Stabbing them into the ground? But they would eventually free themselves anyway. He also tried using them to attack Hakim but that didn't work either.
As expected, the simplest method is usually the most efficient... Brandishing the sword he stole from Captain Wang he began destroying the knives.
Using sword Qi he sliced through the knives until there were none.
The child also began injecting Qi into the knives that grazed him causing them to blow up. But he didn't have much time before Hakim's diverse attack patterns. If the child didn't have the ability to switch his body weight in mid-air he would have already turned into minced meat.
From slashes to smoking arrows and claws, Hakim did not disappoint and with each attack combination he got closer to landing a hit, or that's what he thought.
The child himself had experienced much more dire situations in his time. Though his body was at a disadvantage, the battle experience of the child was far too superior for these men to catch up to him.
There's a reason why the expression 'good things don't last forever' exists. In a situation like this the question that the two hiding enemies should have asked themselves wasn't, 'can he find us?' but 'When will he find us?'.
Unfortunately the answer t othat question is: now.
"Found you." said the child appearing next to the Captain and the knife user on the scouting tower. They were surrounded by thin layers of water that lort of acted as a two way mirror making those inside almost invisible.
"So that's why I couldn't find you. Did you somehow create a sort of mirage with that water?"
The child grew larger than before, to the point that he was almost as tall as the two adults.
Wang pushed the knife user out of the way and made a shield out of ice to try to block the child's attack. That shield cracked in seconds, barely long enough for him to escape with a cut on his face.
The sword sliced through the tower so perfectly that it stayed standing.
The child didn't waste any time and went for another slice, however, the sword began to resist and swung towards him instead, almost beheading him in the process.
The boy fell off the tower as shattered pieces of knives shot in his direction like shrapnel.
Despite this, the child caught every piece of metal before hitting the ground. He then vanished to make some distance between them.
The boy's expression grew even more perplexed.
The Captain was now also using a Qi manipulation art he'd never seen before, and was gathering a large ball of Qi-less water. Though he did not know the purpose of it, he knew better than to just let it happen.
Hakim, of course, got in his way, however, his attempts were in vain. Though it seems like they expected as much.
"Now James!" Shouted Captain Wang.
The moment the child landed on the ground after avoiding Hakim's attack, shards of metal protruded from the ground. This wouldn't have been much of a problem if the shards weren't bizarrely bent into the shapes of hooks.
The child was now literally hooked to the ground. This only stunned him for a moment, however, that moment was long enough for him to get caught by Hakim's smoke.
Resisting as much as possible the child tried morphing and using his Qi to escape but a ball of water splattered on his face allowing for even more smoke to gather.
The moved as much as possible while binded and hooked to the ground in order to avoid the shards of knives being sent his way.
The ball of water asphyxiated him slowly.
His three enemies seemed to be willing to wait for his death… but he of course wasn't. A mad smile dominated his face, causing Wang to get shivers down his spine.
Red Qi began to surround the boy, unleashing a wave of heat. The dry air began to tremble and the child closed his eyes.
A massive storm of Qi started gathering all the smoke, dust, and debris around them. The child opened his eyes and stared at Wang in the eyes as a cage of dust surrounded them.
The child snapped his fingers, sparking a flame. The result of starting a fire in a tight cluster of dry flammable debris is obviously a dust explosion.
Flames erupted from the cloud destroying the scout tower and the few small structures that had survived the fight thus far.
The child's body glowed golden with a 'clang' sound. He walked out of the hooked metal and brushed the dust off his body.
The child seemed to have a 'that was fun' expression.
The three men had escaped the explosion generally unscathed. The captain had protected himself with water and the knife user had raised a piece of the ground as a shield. On the other hand, Hakim barely escaped with minor burns and was breathing heavily.
This seemed to terrify Wang, but he also slowly grew a mad smile.
Captain Wang was a man with a dream, and to reach that dream, he needed to become stronger. In life, you often stumble upon opponents either far too strong or far too weak. The world can be extremely cruel at times.
However, in front of him lay an opportunity, a person or being clearly far stronger than them, but still within reach. Instead of overwhelming strength, the monster had overwhelming wit.
In other words, he would never find a better opponent to push himself to the extreme against.
"As expected," said Wang "A warrior is only ever truly alive in a fight like this!" He began to walk towards the child that was morphing in their larger form again.
"James, sword."
"Roger." With a flick of James' hand, the sword lying on the ground shot towards Wang who caught it and whipped the dust off the blade in a swift movement.
"Your techniques are nothing like I've ever seen before but despite your insane fighting style I'm sure you're a human."
"I was thinking the same. You guys are pretty insane yourselves." said the child.
They both smiled.
"Shall we go for one last round?"
"With pleasure!"
Wang released a huge amount of Qi causing a large geyser of water to shoot out of the forest behind the child.
The child sprung towards the Captain who didn't flinch for a second as a wall of smoke engulfed the child disorientating him. More shards of metal shot up from the ground as more walls appeared but the kid easily evaded them and swiftly manoeuvred through the smoke maze.
The metal projectiles now acted like snakes trying to coil around their prey and when they attached to him, spikes would start digging into his skin. Since they were already shards breaking them didn't help much so he was forced to mostly avoid them in the cramped maze.
The maze was clearly meant to lead him in the wrong direction with the expectation that he would break the walls. However, the child jumped above the maze, this also seemed to be a trap as thousands of pieces of shrapnel waited for him there.
The tactical bombardment like a swarm of shrapnel forced the kid back into the maze. The maze began to twist and turn with the wall now covering the floor and introducing the amazing new ceiling feature. This deprived the child almost completely of their sight as they crashed into walls or fell through them while trying to avoid the metal snakes.
The child then pulled one of the smoke walls out of the ground and dominated it with his own Qi turning it from grey to blue. With this wall, he smashed the ceiling of the maze and escaped above.
Much larger fully formed shrapnel snakes waited for him above. He parried their attacks with the fog wall, however, every hit caused smaller snakes to fall off the main one.
The boy ran across the top of the maze trying to shake off the multiple humongous snakes after him while also avoiding the thousands of smaller snakes.
The boy slammed his wall into the maze completely shattering it and clouding the vision of everyone present. The metal snakes became completely inaccurate giving the child enough time to leap forward using his fog wall as a springboard.
"That's good enough boys!" Said Wang with a smile. "Hello and welcome to your daily weather report! It's fucking shit!"
A shot of pain in the child's leg caused him to trip and fall over. There was a hole? A hole in his legs? But how?
"There may be some light drizzle here and there. So please make sure to dress appropriately!" Said Wang with a smile.
The child quickly morphed the leg's constitution to cover the wound and barely avoided the next few anonymous attacks.
He looked up to see thousands of small water beads falling out of the sky, each one of them cracking small craters into the dry ground upon impact.
"Oh I apologise," said Wang "I meant hail."
He brandished his sword and extended it with water like a whip. The child bent his body in all sorts of wrong ways, popping and snapping his body, but even then he couldn't avoid every single raindrop on top of the Captain's long-range water slashes.
As a retaliation, the child used all his might to successfully catch raindrops and redirect them towards the Captain.
Wang seemed to be unable to move while using such a large-scale attack, he struggled to move his body out of the way of the child's attacks.
The two ended up with multiple cuts trying to avoid the raindrops, yet they both happily smiled like children at a toyshop.
James and Hakim watched the fight with open mouths.
"Alright, this man is dodging raindrops like there's no point anymore. I mean what am I going to do with my shitty knives anyway."
"What? No! You were great! You totally put him in a tough spot!"
"You really think that? I spent so much time making those knives and he broke them so easily. Like that's my thing! I'm the knife guy from Birmingham! What am I meant to do without my knives? I wasn't even a challenge to this guy."
"Of course you are James! And on top of that your entrance was amazing!"
"Really?"
"Yeah! You looked really mysterious and cool! Man trust me you looked sick!"
"Thanks, Hakim. You know, you're really strong and quick-witted on the battlefield but your real quality is your ability to make people feel happy, you know that?"
"Aw man, James that means a lot."
"And you know, every time someone thinks of who they can rely on the most in the crew, they think of you man. It's always you! There's a reason why you're the Captain's right-hand man!"
"Oh, stop it, James!"
"I'm serious fam. Hakim, you make people feel safe!" James and Hakim look into each other's eyes. "You make people feel safe bro."
"Aw, man come here"
James gave Hakim a big heartfelt hug causing Hakim to grunt in pain from his wounds.
For a while now the child had been constantly snapping his fingers. Though it may look like he was trying to remake a scene out of the movie Grease, I assure you he was doing something smart. He'd been trying to figure out how his enemy's martial arts worked. He thought he would understand it better from dominating the fog wall but that turned out to be a dead end. It'd been difficult for his small brain to understand the complexity of the technique, but he got there eventually.
With a smile, the boy snapped a tiny bit of water into existence.
Wang's expression became serious.
Some of the water beads stopped falling and the child stood still with the rain drops.
"I figured it out. You don't use pure Qi. You use the Qi that has already been naturally refined into the surrounding elements. So if you manipulate the metal Qi in weapons you don't need to wrap them in Qi as traditional techniques do. And it's the same with water."
"You think you're pretty smart don't cha." answers Wang "Let's have some fun!"
Wang slashes with his water whip yet again, but this time it freezes into an ice blade midway through the attack. The sudden change in pace catches the child off guard as the slow ice blade crashes into the ground behind him.
Multiple slow and easy-to-dodge ice slashes target the child, who responds with ice bullets.
Wang progressively made his ice slashes larger and larger and suddenly increased their speed. Before the child knew it their vision was completely blocked by a wall of ice slashes.
The water drops around him began to crack with a burst of Qi before suddenly exploding.
With a smile, Wang powered up for a final attack. He unleashed a vertical slash with an extremely thin, string-like water whip.
The child still overwhelmed by the series of attacks only felt the water whip when it touched his skin. For the first time in their battle, a true solid life-threatening attack had landed. If the child reacted even a millisecond too late he would be immediately sliced in two.
This triggered a massive rush in the child causing a massive influx of golden Qi to be released. This time an extremely loud bell clang resonated, sending a massive shockwave in all directions.
Bringing silence to the battlefield.
Wang struggled to get back on his feet. He opened his eyes but couldn't see much apart from clouds of dust.
"Whew, fuck me that was intence," he said through heavy breaths. He groaned as he cracked his back and got his bearings.
"Boys! How are we doing?"
He limped towards his sword.
"Boys?"
He picked up the sword and looked around. He spotted a metal sphere and tapped it three times.
"You two ok in there?"
"Haha yep!" answered Hakim
"Yeap! All good in here Captain! How's it looking out there?" said James
"Bahahaha. You coward pieces of shit." Laughed Wang as he sat down next to the iron ball with another groan.
The cloud of smoke slowly faded… Really slowly…
Wang squinted to try catch a glimpse of the enemy.
It's still… still fading...
Almost there...
Alright now.
"Well fuck. The damn kid's gone super Sayan. I was thinking 'shitty demon runt' would be a perfect nickname for him but I guess now 'Golden Boy' would be more appropriate"
"Ah fuck. Do you think you can win?" Asked the metal ball.
"Well unless I can think of a new move I won't last long. Well, I can think of a few things but now that he's figured out how to manipulate water it'll get a bit more complicated."
"But I've never seen anyone able to manipulate water better than you though? Is he that good?"
"He's not at my level but he knows it just well enough to get in my way- oh shit! SSSSSSHHHH! He's coming this way." said Wang, interrupting himself.
A brief silence accompanies the steps of the small child's silhouette. Wang frowned and tapped the iron ball one more time before getting up.
"If I say the word 'cargo', escape through the ground to base camp and get everyone to the boat. I'll join you later."
"What!?" shouted James "We can't leave you Capt-"
"James. Captain's orders." interrupted Hakim.
James wanted to escape with the Captain now, but Wang had already walked away.
A crippling silence introduced itself, only interrupted by the wind picking up and the footsteps of the two foes.
The Golden boy and the Weatherman Wang walked up to each other.
The golden boy snapped his fingers and created some dry dirt that was immediately blown away in the wind. He then picked up a shard of metal and melted it.
"Since, you seem to follow the element system, as long as I counter water with earth and fire with metal there isn't much you can do."
"Oh really?"
"..."
They stared at each other for a moment.
"You're thinking of using the water drops in the ground to attack me aren't you."
"Damn it!" Wang slammed his weapon into the ground "You think you're smart? Huh, kid? Well, you're completely right! You're really, fucking smart!"
Wang thought to himself for a moment, and he looked around at the ground, the forest, and the sky.
His gaze returned to the Golden Boy and he tapped his foot. "Y-you suck!" he said meekly.
"What?"
"Nothing. I didn't say anything."
The sound of James hitting his head into the iron ball and Hakim's face-palming subtly reached the ears of the boy.
The kid stood there and sighed.
"If you treat me to a good meal I won't kill you."
"..."
Wang and the boy stared at each other.
The problem with these kinds of situations is that they require trust. Asking someone to sit down and have a meal with you just after being at each other's throat is absurd.
"Well, that's good enough for me!" with a wave of his hand all the ice and water in the ground slowly rose up into a ball in the sky.
Luckily the two are both just as dumb as each other.
"I want to check on our chef myself after you almost killed him," he said, sheathing his sword.
As the massive streams of water raised towards the sky, Wang began to clean himself up and brush the dust off his foreign clothes.
"Why is the water gathering in the shape of an X." asked the boy.
"Hm? Oh, that's… That's just that"
The child did not look impressed by the answer.
"I-it's just how I water-gather, yknow? I'm gathering. I can't gather without gathering and the gathering goes in X, it's just how it's always been! It's just how it goes!"
"Is it a signal?"
"No!! It's not!"
The kid raised an eyebrow.
"If you want to go at it again we can," said the boy.
Wang also raised an eyebrow. They both weirdly stared at each other with raised eyebrows.
"Alright! Alright! It's a signal! But it's nothing bad, trust me!" said Wang, returning to reason.
"..."
The child scratched his head in the awkward silence.
"Powerdown already, we'll stop the fight here. Trust me I don't want any more of my men impaled like kebabs." His words were light-hearted but his gaze wasn't.
The child only now got a proper look at the Captain. Needless to say, Wang looked like the most untrustworthy person to ever exist. He had the textbook 'I'm a bandit' look, and his slightly muscly physique made him look like a stereotypical canon fodder villain found in every cultivation novel story. Well, he had all his teeth at least.
"Then make those two come out," said the boy, rightfully skeptical.
They stared at each other again but Wang eventually gave in and said, "You heard him, boys".
Hakim and James crept out of the metal ball.
"Are you sure about this Boss?" asked hakim.
"Yeah, it'll be fine. Let's go back to camp.
"You want to bring this guy back to camp with us?" rightfully exclaimed James.
"You two make the road slightly usable. I'm going to see how Yaroslav is doing," ordered the Captain.
Wang walked past the Golden Boy and continued towards the forest.
The child sighed and powered down. He turned around and began to slowly follow Wang.
The truth was that the boy still hadn't had a decent meal yet. He had been fighting starvation as well as his enemies the entire time. If he had continued to fight any longer he would have not only been at a severe disadvantage, but he may have also died of starvation after the fight.
Wang put his arm out to stop the child from going any further. At the same time, one of the trees erupted completely drenching them in water.
"Ah shit, I was so close to doing that perfectly." Wang took out a handkerchief and gave it to the boy.
The boy was about to use it but then realised that the handkerchief was already wet. He rolled his eyes.
"What are you doing?"
"Oh this? Well I made a few preparations like these. If we had continued the fight I was going to shoot, cough, some of these trees at you, cough cough. Hold on! I think I breathed in some of the water! Cough cough." Wang bent the other way to cough and raised his index finger so the boy would wait for him to finish.
"Right, so I was going to shoot this tree at you and then blow it up. Just like that, but more aggressive. I'm draining the water so we can bring it back to camp."
"You had this much in store for me?"
"Yup!"
"Aw man! Do you want to do another round?"
"Nah we can't. I need to check on Yaroslav. I know you're probably a really nice guy but if you killed him we can't be friends."
"Ah, sorry about that."
"..."
Wang stared at the kid while draining the trees.
"Here kid. Watch this."
Wang turned around to his crewmate who had been clearing the road so people could still pass despite the complete obliteration of the road where the fight had taken place.
"Alright so I need to aim it a bit." Wang lifted his arm and slightly tilted one of the trees. He looked back and forth between the tree's position and his crewmates a few times before nodding to himself a few times.
"Ok, you ready kid?"
The boy nodded with a smile.
"Three, two, one … GO!" The tree shot out into the sky leaving a massive stream of water behind it, which also fell on the boy.
The two crewmates noticed the tree and immediately started running while Wang laughed his head off.
The tree eventually stopped going up and started falling vertically onto the two victims.
"Here's the fun part" Wang aimed at the two with his hands and did some adjustments, as he did them water started shooting out of the side of the tree adjusting its trajectory and aiming it directly towards the ground.
Once he was satisfied Wang did a thumbs down motion which caused more water to propel the tree at an even higher speed towards the poor two crewmates.
He looked back at the kid trying to act cool and said: "Bang!"
The tree blew up behind him unleashing an extremely high amount of pressurised water.
Wang gave the child a 'pretty cool right?' kind of look before getting completely drenched in the water from his own explosion.
The explosion completely drenched the entire environment, making the moment not so cool. A piece of the tree also jumpscared him by landing right next to his foot.
On the other hand the crewmates had enough time to take cover and didn't get wet at all.
"Well whatever! We're going to camp! Join us when you're done!"
Wang and the kid continued through the forest.