Hadjar once again didn’t understand what he was being told. These words contained knowledge and mysteries that were still unattainable for him. He obeyed, trying to let his body remember the swings that he’d rehearsed in his mind.
If the leaf was on the seventh pillar, then why should he try to strike it? The attack had already been made. Hadjar’s mind already knew what to do and how to do it. He needed only to connect it to his body.
The whirlwind of energy around Hadjar calmed down. This wasn’t a test of strength, it was a test of spirit. One’s muscles and body weren’t the only things that took part in a battle, and Hadjar had to come to terms with this.
Traves waved his hand, dispelling the previous targets and creating new ones.
This time, the misty crescent launched by the ‘Falling Leaf’ stance was even more invisible and ephemeral. It easily passed through the first four obstacles and then lingered on the fifth, never reaching the sixth...
“Your movements are too sharp, disciple. Steady your heart. Free yourself just like the tree frees a falling leaf. Forget about time and space. Don’t look at what separates you from your goal, but at what unites you both.”
Again, Hadjar didn’t understand Traves’ words.
The following hours, days, or maybe weeks, merged into an endless attempt to use the stance properly. Each time he received instructions from Traves, Hadjar improved his Technique slightly. Although he didn’t understand the meaning of the instructions, he could grasp the edges of the mystery.
Finally, after the misty crescent became almost invisible, Hadjar was able to cut through nine pillars with one light strike. Tired, barely standing upright, he gave up and collapsed into the grass.
“Not bad. What do you think, teacher?” Hadjar asked. Instead of answering him, Traves waved his stick. At first, Hadjar didn’t understand what had happened. Then, with a slight rattle, the twentieth pillar fell apart. It wouldn’t have been so surprising had the previous nineteen pillars not remained untouched
“You are still far from ‘not bad’, my disciple.”
Hadjar didn’t even have time to curse.
He realized that he was sitting next to an extinguished fire. In the east, the sun was rising, staining the sky in golden and crimson hues. Azrea was still sleeping in his turban as the Dead Mountains began to wake up. People were hurrying to grab the best spots around the local arena before the battle between their best warrior and the stranger began.
Hadjar got up and stretched his stiff limbs. For some reason, despite the sand dust in the air, he was breathing more easily after last night.
“Northerner?” a familiar voice inquired.
Einen emerged from the shadows. He stared at Hadjar for a while as if he were seeing him for the first time.
“What?” Hadjar asked, surprised by the scrutiny.
“You’ve changed, Northerner. Or rather, something has changed inside you.”
Hadjar shrugged.
“Yeah, you’re right, it doesn’t matter right now,” Einen nodded. “I’ve come to warn you. The Bedouins will pit you against a true adept.”
“A Heaven Soldier. Well,” Hadjar said. “I haven’t fought one for a long time.”
Leaving the slightly dumbfounded islander behind him, Hadjar adjusted his sword and walked toward the arena.
Chapter 285
Einen followed Hadjar to the Bedouin arena. The place was surrounded by a high picket fence made from the bones of various creatures. A lot of the Bedouins were gathered around it, sitting on the long, semicircular rows of amphitheater seating carved into the rocks. Fathers carried their children on their shoulders to give them a better look and everyone seemed to be in high spirits overall.
The people welcomed their best warrior with loud cheers. Or one of their best, anyway. He accepted the honor with a stoic expression. His legs and forearms were protected by a composite, light iron armor. There was no armor across his chest, except for the wide leather straps that held his shoulder pads affixed to his wide shoulders. He also had a massive belt around his waist.
In his hands, he held a kind of throwing weapon with three wide, curved, and serrated blades.
He had a steel tip on his strange helmet (shaped like a turban with a metal cap). It lay in the sand, fastened to a chain and swinging slightly in the wind.
The Bedouin cultivator bounced on his left foot, his right leg striking the sand. He was warming up. Judging by these movements and his weapons, Hadjar realized that they wouldn’t be fighting in close quarters. The man was going to keep his distance and try to exhaust Hadjar. The Bedouin was probably fast and dangerous, like a desert snake or a scorpion.
“Good luck, Hadjar,” Einen patted Hadjar on the shoulder and walked away to join the rest of the caravan scouts.
All of them, except Kharad, were standing near the fence. Hadjar noticed concern in Shakh’s eyes. It was unlikely that the boy was worried about him. He was most likely fretting about the fate of the caravan’s thousands of passengers who would die of thirst if Hadjar lost this battle.
The head scout sat next to the Bedouin leader, who was lying on pillows underneath a canopy. He ate strange, yellow berries while slave girls fanned him.
When Hadjar entered the arena, the gate immediately shut behind him. The leader, after examining the foreigner with an appraising look, nodded and stood up. His silk robes fluttered in the wind and shone in the sun due to being embroidered with pearls and emeralds. Once he’d uttered something in his incomprehensible dialect, he turned to Kharad and nodded. The chief scout stood up.
“The leader just reminded you of the terms, Northerner,” Kharad translated. “If you lose, you’ll become a slave of the tribe, and the caravan won’t be allowed to pass through these lands.”
“Yep,” Hadjar murmured. “Everything’s quite simple.”
“Do you accept these terms?”
Instead of answering him, Hadjar turned toward the leader. He touched his lips and then his forehead with two fingers, then bowed. The leader nodded slightly, and waved his hand sharply. At his signal, several mighty, enormous men began to beat a steady rhythm on huge drums. The crests of the sand dunes trembled from the vibration.
The people rose from their seats to get a better look at what was happening.
As soon as the drums sounded, the Heaven Soldier tugged on his wrists. The two weapons with three long blades immediately turned into two disks rotating at incredible speed. The spectators who were at a low level of cultivation probably thought that the man’s weapons had disappeared altogether.
Hadjar didn’t even manage to grab the hilt of his blade before the disks flew from the cultivator’s hands. Howling like a desert coyote, they cut through the air. They didn’t fly straight toward him, but moved in odd zigzag patterns. Hadjar simply couldn’t keep track of both of them. He dodged the first disk only thanks to his sharp instincts.
Hadjar jumped up and to the side, letting the weapon pass under him. The blades came within five inches of hitting him. Suddenly, Hadjar felt a burning sensation in his left side and fell to the sand.
The crowd welcomed the first blood with screams and hooting. The giant men started beating their drums even faster. Their rhythm merged with the rhythm of his beating heart.
The cultivator didn’t even move from his spot. He threw up his arms and the weapons, traveling at an arc, returned to him. He smiled broadly and turned to the spectators. Shouting something to them and pointing at Hadjar, he moved a blade near his throat, the gesture very clear. When the people exploded into more delighted cheering, the Bedouin howled like a coyote.
“I’ll call you Coyote, then,” Hadjar spat some blood out.
Rising to his feet, Hadjar tore off the remnants of his tattered caftan. He kicked off his sandals, digging his toes deep into the sand. The crowd calmed down a bit. They examined the stranger’s torso and arms. The sun had scorched his skin, but it was obvious that he wasn’t a local. The scars on his body were pink, not
brown or coral-hued as the desert dwellers usually had.
Noting that the crowd had stopped cheering for him, Coyote turned back to his foe. A trickle of blood flowed from his enemy’s left side, but that wasn’t what had attracted the people’s attention. It was the scars. Hadjar’s torso was covered in them. He had burns and wounds from swords, spears, arrows, hammers, fangs, and whips. Hadjar’s body looked as if he’d been born in the middle of a battle and left to survive in an endless war.
“Now it’s my turn,” Hadjar’s eyes flashed with a bright fire. In their depths, a dragon woke up and roared. The wind spun behind him, kicking up a whirlwind of sand. “Strong wind!”
He swung his blade, and instead of the usual tornado, a dense stream of wind with ghostly blades inside it surged toward his foe. The night he’d spent with Traves’ shadow had really changed Hadjar. Traves had opened new horizons for him and shown him what to aim for.
The smile faded from Coyote’s face. Spinning his weapons again, he moved them in front of himself. The stream of cutting wind was stopped cold and rendered ineffective, but Hadjar wasn’t there by the time Coyote looked back up.
The spectators saw only the shadows of five ravens. Only Coyote spotted the swordsman’s swift movements. Running in a wide semicircle, Hadjar rounded on his enemy and leapt forward.
His sword was aimed directly at his foe’s head. The hundreds of deadly battles he’d survived during his years of war had taught him to always try and end his foe as swiftly as possible.
It looked as if Hadjar had just disappeared and then emerged from a cloud of black feathers right behind Coyote. Ripples spread out from where his sword made contact.
There was a metallic ringing and Hadjar barely managed to jump aside. His sword had been blocked by a dagger which suddenly came to life, shrouded in a strange, gray energy.
“Not bad, stranger,” the cultivator said in the language of the desert dwellers. Flexing his shoulders and arms, he circled his enemy. “When I was asked to fight a simple practitioner, I just laughed. Now I can see that the Night Stars favor me. I’ll be able to consecrate my path of cultivation with the blood of a young genius.”
As soon as he finished speaking, the cultivator disappeared among the sands.
“Watch out, Northerner!” Shakh shouted, but it was too late.
With a grunt, Hadjar collapsed onto the sand as a cold blade pierced his back. Then something hit his ribs and Hadjar was thrown through the air, crashing into the fence after being hurled a good ten yards away at least. That damned Coyote knew a Technique similar to Shakh’s.
Chapter 286
“Barbarian,” Ilmena breathed out worriedly, putting her hands on the hilts of her daggers as Hadjar landed directly in front of them.
“It’s okay,” Hadjar muttered through clenched teeth, spitting out blood again. “Everything is going according to plan.”
The others didn’t need to know that Hadjar had been put down like a stupid beast. He’d been too arrogant. The difference in power between him and a true cultivator was still tangible, and his wounds were proof of that.
Holding on to the fence and leaving behind bloody stains once he let it go, Hadjar rose to his feet.
Coyote didn’t press the attack. He certainly felt confident enough to let his opponent get back up. Although he had been alarmed by the northerner’s maneuver at first, what followed had put his mind at ease. The swordsman wasn’t a genius, just a talented young man who’d decided that the whole world was his playground.
The Bedouin warmed up some more, jumping from foot to foot and juggling his weapons. Hadjar cut off a section of his pants and bandaged his wound. As he tightened the impromptu bandage, he grimaced from a sharp flash of pain, but immediately mastered his body and didn’t show any other signs of discomfort.
The wound wasn’t deep. The attack had damaged only the muscle tissue without hitting any of his organs. Coyote was at the initial Stage of being a Heaven Soldier, otherwise he would’ve already sent Hadjar to the next world.
Taking a deep breath, Hadjar closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again and exhaled sharply, he no longer heard the drumming, nor the spectators. Suddenly, a dragon’s shadow flew over everyone’s heads, and a low, drawn-out, animalistic roar filled the air.
A whirlwind of blue energy sprang up around Hadjar, an inhuman fury could be seen in his eyes, and a storm seemed to be approaching.
“Not bad,” Coyote whispered.
He spun his weapons, sheathed them across his back, and then began to abruptly swing his hands in front of him. Dozens of sand copies of the Bedouin’s weapons flew toward Hadjar. He met them head on, as an immovable stone would meet the fury of a spring storm.
Hadjar raised his sword high above his head.
“I hope you’re ready, Coyote,” Hadjar growled out over the noise of the storm.
Hundreds of blades flew toward him, but he seemed to ignore them. Fighting at a distance wasn’t his strong suit, but engaging in melee would mean he’d subject himself to more trickery and deceit. Hadjar was running out of options.
The fight had to end as soon as possible, otherwise he would either run out of energy or blood, as his wound was still bleeding.
A mysterious sword appeared in Hadjar’s mind. It was the basis of his future attack. Hadjar added the ‘Spring Wind’ stance to it, and then imagined an autumn leaf falling from a branch and landing on his opponent’s chest. Coyote seemed to feel it. He glanced down, but it was already too late.
With an inhuman roar, Hadjar swung his sword. His roar echoed the roar of the storm created by the strike. A dense stream of air at least ten feet wide spun the sand into a whirlwind. Amid the glimmer of blue wind, steel light, and sand, the outline of a dragon was visible.
The fence creaked from the pressure the powerful attack generated. The closest spectators hastily enveloped themselves in energy in an attempt to defend themselves from the echo of the strike.
The attack rushed toward the cultivator. For a moment, Coyote saw a grinning beast as his foe, not a simple man holding a sword. He saw a monster. Shaking off this delusion, he prepared to defend himself. A simple practitioner would never best him, the best warrior of the tribe!
Coyote thrust his spinning blades into the sand. A wall of gray energy surrounded him. It soaked into his hands, merging with the sand and his weapons. A scorpion’s stinger rose up above him. With a strained cry, Coyote lifted a whole layer of earth and sand. He covered himself with it, almost wearing it like a caftan.
The roaring dragon struck the huge sand scorpion. They fought each other, claws against paws, stinger against a fanged maw.
Then a powerful explosion rocked the arena. The fence bent and flew away. The center of the arena turned into a crater that was a full thirty feet wide.
Hadjar stood at one end. A cross-shaped wound was on his chest. On the other side, Coyote lay. He was gasping for breath and trying to recover. His helmet and turban had been torn off, exposing his long, gray hair. A sword wound gaped in the man’s right side.
“Excellent!” The cultivator roared and fell to the sand.
Hadjar closed his eyes. He’d fought Shakh and knew that his vision would only hinder him here. A moment later, he felt death approaching from his right.
Moving his body back, Hadjar swiped his sword upward. The clash of metal on metal sounded, and Hadjar spun his blade around, bending back like a flexible, young branch, trying to hit his foe’s legs.
The spectators stared at this amazing battle. The stranger’s movements were smooth and light. He whirled like a leaf in the wind, or a feather across the water’s surface. He flowed around his enemy, and his sword fluttered like a carefree butterfly, turning into a crossbow bolt only when it was time to strike. Coyote was relentless and fast. He would sting like a scorpion, then disappear from one place and appear in another.
Their blades shone. Dozens of blows rained down on each of them with every second that passed. Sometimes, flashes
of the fighters’ Techniques could be seen. Sand blades kept colliding with the streams of cutting wind.
“Calm Wind!” Hadjar shouted.
The world slowed slightly for a second. Coyote missed a step, feeling a pressure that had come from out of nowhere. It was enough to allow the tip of Hadjar’s blade to graze his cheek. The cultivator’s eyes flashed and his blade-stinger pierced through the sand while trying to stab Hadjar’s foot. It seemed to creep under the surface before emerging somewhere else.
They moved back once again. Both of them were wounded, breathing heavily, but they looked at each other without hatred, just a desire to win. Since they’d exchanged their best attacks, both of them were now almost done. Looking at each other, they realized that there would be no winner if the fight continued for much longer. They would both simply fall unconscious from exhaustion.
Coyote brought his spinning blades together and shouted “Peacock’s tail!” Energy exploded around him. The cultivator’s silhouette shimmered, turning into a haze, and a moment later, five enemies stood in front of Hadjar. Each of them held a pair of spinning blades in his hands.
They launched an attack that really resembled a peacock’s huge tail: it flew like a fan across the arena, and then merged in a single instant, turning into a blade-stinger of surprising sharpness that sped through the air with amazing speed.
Hadjar calmed his heartbeat, accessed his inner blade and all his knowledge of the Way of the Sword, and then imagined a falling leaf on the Bedouin’s chest. Only this time, there were three fallen leaves, he didn’t stop at just one.
Hadjar swung his blade so quickly that blurry shadows were left behind, almost like the memories of his attacks. Three dragons, albeit a little weaker than the previous one had been, roared through the air.
The peacock’s tail topped with the stinger collided with the three ghosts of the Lords of the Heavens. A tornado of energy began to form, caused by the clashing Techniques, kicking up a sandstorm and blocking everyone’s view for a moment.
Dragon Heart: Sea of Sand. LitRPG Wuxia Series: Book 4 Page 14