Hardcore: Qi Worlds Chapter 8: Feral Trial 1

Benzhi completed his forms with Mother making great progress. Due to his ability to sense qi he was able to direct streams down his sword to a mediocre level. Maintaining the stream and completing the form at the same time was taxing. Perhaps he should practice the forms with the sword for a few or more days until it became ingrained and then introduce the qi blade.

"Benzhi," Mother spoke matter of factly, "today you have a trial. Only training and no doing is not good."

Benzhi blinked at Mother. This was different he thought.

"Ferals. They do not listen. There is no tolerance for that which threatens the harmony of the forest." Mother instructed. "There are many ferals in the forest, acting badly, you must find them and remedy. Remember this well child; every tree has roots, every disease has not only signs but a source. Go. But do not exhaust yourself come back at nightfall. You are still a seedling."

Mother's instructions were, in her own way, always helpful. She had a way of talking. Not as cryptic as Yoda, but she was probably just as wise as the Jedi Master, albeit Yoda wasn't real..wait..nevermind. Benzhi surmised she could probably read his thoughts or at least glean them from his body language, his eyes and how well she knew him.

Benzhi scouted the edge of the glade, Gisael was usually lurking here when he finished his forms. Not unexpectedly she was unable to be found, she never went out of her way to be helpful unless ordered it seemed. Benzhi had seen signs of ferals when traversing the forest and had tried to avoid them while training. Today was the opposite. He wanted to find them. He would start by trying to pick up their trail in areas where he had seen them before.

'Sword check. Oh, that's it. That was easy. Fully equipped,' Benzhi talked to himself. His extended list of equipment was one wooden sword. Laughing to himself, if you had told him a few weeks ago he was going to hunt goblins, in a forest, with a wooden sword and otherwise virtually naked...the mind boggles. They can't be that hard, can they? He did lay one out on his first day.

Benzhi played with tiny qi balls on his feet while running and leaping. It had varied results he would need to experiment more with qi formation patterns and tweaks to turbulence. At the moment playing was risky, he did not have enough information to use the qi effectively. An idea struck him. Ears. He quite successfully pooled or layered qi on his eyes, if he did the same with his ears perhaps he would gain superlative hearing and be able to find the ferals from a great distance.

Benzhi stopped moving. He layered qi over his ear ducts and listened. A loud Wooof immediately assaulted his hearing. Sharp pains hit him as his ear drums seemed to burst with the noise. A trickle of blood left his ear. 'That is not good,' Benzhi thought. The forest was quiet, but whatever he did amplified forest sounds to such a degree it damaged his hearing and his eardrums. Now, contrary to what he was trying to achieve, his hearing was not enhanced. It was impaired due to the damage he just did.

Circling some shrubbery Benzhi began to search an area he recalled seeing signs of what he presumed to of ferals. This assumption was made due to damage that was done to the flora in the area. He searched the area for what seemed hours finally coming across some crude markings on a tree, 'gang mark?' hah, Benzhi chuckled to himself. He was able to pick up a smell and tracked down what were the remains of a pine marten. He was able to identify it because of his lessons with Gisael. The poor thing looked like it was killed for sport. Nothing had been harvested, neither fur nor meat. This was definitely a sign of something not in harmony with the forest. Killing to survive would be acceptable, killing for sport, no way. Benzhi didn't need any special training or forest intuition to come to this conclusion.

The feral or ferals had been in the area. Now they could not be found, Behzni thought. He searched for a few more hours to no avail. There were only a couple of hours before twilight, the day's light was already diminishing. Benzhi had had an idea while searching and he would try it now before it was too late. He sat and closed his eyes in, his now usual, meditative pose kneeling and sitting back on his heels. Benzhi wanted to see if he could track using less conventional means. He layered some qi on his eyes and the now familiar burst of blue green luminescence filled his vision. Benzhi scanned the area slowly, he could not determine if anything was out of place. He wasn't even certain what was normal. He began searching for anything that broke the harmony. Or anything with a core, even small, that moved. Trees and plants may sway in the wind, but only wildlife moved. This search was becoming fruitless as well. Benzhi tried to scan away from his body, he had been able to imagine looking at himself from afar, why couldn't he apply that technique here?

Another failure, as soon as Benzhi left his body, he succumbed to only being able to use his imagination. He could only visualise, which was not helpful in this case. Benzhi spent another hour in this qi enhanced meditative state scanning the forest becoming familiar with the forest and in the hope that he could catch a glimpse of a feral or a disturbance they may cause. He would try again tomorrow. It was only a matter of time before they came back to this point.

After practising blade sword forms all morning Benzhi returned to the feral signs place the following day. 

His hearing had returned to normal, one less thing to worry about, after a nights meditation and drinking from the pool. Its regenerative powers would certainly a boon. It was approaching midday and Benzhi was almost to the place where he meditated the previous, close to the pine marten corpse. He heard a garbling sound if it was speech it was unlike anything he had ever heard. Definitely out of place and something he had never heard in the forest before. It was likely ferals.

Benzhi crept forward, scanning the area, he pushed some qi crudely down his blade in preparation. He spied a feral, garbling, likely to itself, stalking around the corpse of the pine marten. Benzhi stopped, motionless, using a tree for cover as best he could. The feral had pale green skin and sporadic hides covering its body. It had what looked like a wooden bowl turned upside on its head. The way it's armour looked was almost amusing. If it wasn't a disgusting little feral, it could be cute. The feral was about three feet tall, Benzhi would feel at home calling it a goblin with its hooked pointed nose and pointy ears. It stopped garbling and began to sniff and search around the corpse of the pine marten. Benzhi could have pondered what it was doing, however, decided to charge. He wasn't sure if it was the one he encountered on his first day or if it was alone.

Sprinting directly at the feral, Benzhi didn't want to give it a chance to escape. He leapt over a bush using a small amount of qi on the sole of his foot for a moment for an extra boost. He closed the distance in mere moments. Benzhi didn't know what a look of shock on a ferals face would look like, but he would hazard a guess he was now seeing it. It screamed at him or it just screamed, Benzhi was unsure. It was holding a spear and tried to bring it to bear, however, it was too slow. Benzhi brought his sword from behind him in one massive swipe trying to slice the feral in two. The sword impacted with the feral with an enormous crunch at first it crumpled enveloping the sword then it flew. The slice had not cut it in two, however, it must have caused tremendous amounts of internal injuries on top of the damage incurred when the goblin fell in a heap which must have been twenty meters to Benzhi's left. The qi blade technique Benzhi had so far developed did not allow him to slice through the feral, it actually repulsed the creature causing it to fly, upon contact, much further than Benzhi would have thought possible.

The feral was unmoving, Benzhi strode over to investigate, he didn't want it jumping up and skewering him as soon as his back was turned. After only taking one step he heard another scream, there was another, Benzhi spun to the south scanning for the source. It wasn't charging him, in fact, it had turn tail and run. It was running south. Benzhi gave chase.

The new feral was running south. The glade was north. It would leave the forest if it kept going in this direction. Benzhi was gaining slowly, although the feral was surprisingly quick and nimble. Benzhi's strides were two times longer and he was also no slouch with all the training he had been doing. Benzhi could charge it down, but was that the wise thing to do? Mother's instructions eluded to finding the source. The feral was most likely heading for safety and safety would most likely mean home.

Benzhi would have to be cautious, he didn't want to run into a warband of ferals. However, he slowed allowing the feral to gain ground on him, without losing touch with it. He had to leave feral number one behind not knowing if it was alive or dead. There was nothing to be done, he couldn't afford the time to go back and check.

Trailing feral number two Benzhi had to stop every now and then, its pace was slowing as it tired. It would look back and see him, scream and begin sprinting again. He needed it to think it had lost him. Benzhi started to strafe, tracking it diagonally while increasing the distance between them in the hopes it would lose sight of him and think it had escaped. By the time it broke the treeline, escaping the forest, it was a good few hundred meters in front of him and he was west by a couple of hundred as well. If it wasn't for using qi to enhance his eyes he would have lost sight of it. He could track it if he lost visuals so he wasn't too concerned. Plus, it was almost running in a straight line, which made tracking it rather simple.

Watching, feral number two, it had stopped and was turning around in what seemed to be indecision. Benzhi lay down in the grass. He was able to see half a kilometre with qi enhanced sight quite easily, however, he had no idea of the capability of the feral. It showed no signs of seeing him, he was pretty sure it would be obvious if it panicked again upon spying him. It seemed to come to a decision and continue its way south across the rolling hills. Since leaving the forest the landscape reverted to rocks, grasses long and short with a few sporadic bushes. Benzhi had been following the feral for about three hours now, the sun was still up in the sky with more than a few hours until sunset. The slow speed of the chase made it take Benzhi longer than normal to reach the southern edge of the forest. He had been on the move now for close to five hours, however, he was sure he could get back in four or three if pressed. Hopefully, the feral would reach its home soon, it would be disappointing if it was just running aimlessly into the wilderness. But it's beeline direction encouraged Benzhi, it had a definite goal in mind.

After another hour of tracking feral number two, at the maximum distance Benzhi could manage, Benzhi spied a hillock covered in crude huts. Eureka, this must be it. Benzhi, at a good range, circled the feral village. Counting the huts and watching for movement. There wasn't a commotion, he could discern, when feral number two arrived home. He did lose sight of it as it passed the outlying huts. There must be twenty huts, which seemed to contain multiple ferals. If each hut contained five ferals there would be one hundred in the village. Ouch. Was that even possible for Benzhi?

The wise thing to do would be to return to Mother and report what he had discovered. Even if he left now it would be dark before he arrived back at the glade. Benzhi looked up at the feral village and then back towards the forest. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

It was time for whack a feral. Benzhi crept towards the hut covered hillock.

Chapter end