The heat from the sun had changed from mildly hot to practically burning but Li Kong wasn't done with his training yet as he closed his eyes tightly and his breath flowed out rhythmically.
Li Kong awoken and slowly moved his feet and as the the wind carried his weight off the ground, he accelerated forward but rather than stopping like usual, he planted his right leg fiercely onto the ground and shifted his right shoulders slightly to the front but unfortunately, the kinetic force was too much for his body to handle as his legs tripped causing his whole body to tilted forward.
In a last attempt to lessen the impact, Li Kong tried to roll to even out the impact and he travelled the distance like a wheel in a horse cart before stopping after crashing into a large bush.
After he had crashed into the bush, he immediately rose up but his head was spinning everywhere as vertigo confused his vision.
"Ugh!" Li Kong quickly covered his mouth and leaned on the nearby tree with his hand and head facing downwards.
After the wave had receded back, Li Kong forcefully dragged his own feet back to his training spot before he dropped himself down away from the sunlight, under the tree's protection.
"What are you trying to do?" A questioning yet odd voice calling him out.
Li Kong, completely pale and devoid of energy, refrained from answering the question yet and instead closing his eyes and waited for the nausea to subsided first.
"I tried to combine Wind Steps and Flame Fist together." Li Kong answered with a shaky breath.
"Well, the idea was good. If you can do it, there will probably no one in the same realm that can stand a chance against you." White sincerely praised his student's effort. "But..! Your execution is still severely lacking. Although you had mastered the basic of Wind Steps, some of your movements are still too rigid to be called like the wind and your stance when using Flame Fist is still lackluster." Knives was continuously thrown, stabbing, ripping, and shattering Li Kong's heart by each words coming out.
"You can't possibly hope to do it so cease the thoughts of doing it from your head for now and keep on trying to completely mastered each of the move first before you're ever dreaming to trying it again. Do you listen?" White raised his voice.
"Yes..." Imaginary blood silently dripping out from his mouth as Li Kong mourned and sobbed.
Done with resting, Li Kong used his hand to push himself back up and stretched out his body before gently picked up the bead like picking a berry from the bush and put it on his palm.
"Shall we check on the west side of the forest?" Li Kong asked.
"Yeah." White replied.
After hearing the reply, Li Kong quickly packed up his things before walking to the forest and disappeared into the hiding of the bushes and trees.
...
Because of the relative small size of the Ruman Village and the perk Wind Steps brought to travelling distance, Li Kong arrived at the aforementioned place in less time than it need to boil an egg.
Wasting no time, Li Kong immediately roamed around the area and even risking going through the area that had been marked with claws on the surrounding tree's bark.
To his unfortunate luck, when entering the territory of the beast, Li Kong walked without much thought and found a huge cave in front of him.
Thinking the altar was inside of the cave, Li Kong decided to take a little peek at the inside of the cave.
There he found lots of dried grasses laying on top of the floor and not long after that, a small bear cub emerged from the shadow of the cave and crawled towards Li Kong.
The cub dropped itself down and sat while observing the human in front him with curiosity and then, the cub tilted his head and pointed one of its claw to the chin before blinking slowly with an open mouth.
"Aw!!! You're so cute!" Completely entranced by the display of cuteness, Li Kong without a thought carried the cub into his arm and petted the cub head gently.
The cub let out a small sound and moved its head accordingly to his rubbing.
Li Kong, completely lovestruck, continued his rubbing with a greater speed.
The cub chuckled before seemingly noticed something and cried out while moving its legs around.
"Hmm?" Li Kong confused at the sudden change in the cub and decided to track the cub line of vision but before he able to do that, a warm breath tickled his nape as a huge shadow covered the sunlight.
Li Kong froze in place like a statue before something furry and black entered his field of vision and it took him not a even second to realize it was a nose as it moved, followed closely by a sniff sound, after that the nose was retracted and disappeared from his sight.
Li Kong gulped down before putting the cub gently onto the ground and slowly turned his head back and gulped.
There a huge black bear stood, completely towering over him. Because of the lack of sunlight, Li Kong couldn't make out exactly the detail of the bear but the sharp claws on its side was already enough for Li Kong to realize he had screwed up a big time.
"Hahaha... I didn't realize you were there." Li Kong tried to communicate. "You see I was just playing with your child. I thought he was lonely so I went and played with him but I didn't do anything bad to him! I swear on my life!"
But the bear held its position, menacingly.
'I'm done.' Li Kong wanted to cry but the situation forbid him from doing it as the mother bear couldn't stay still any longer and let out a piercing scream to the air before mauling at the human in front of it but the human had long gone and disappeared from its sight.
The mother bear quickly scanned its surrounding and found the human was running in a top speed into the forest and decided to quickly follow him.
Hearing the beast stride, terror filled Li Kong's entire being as he used Wind Steps continuously but the terrain surrounding him was filled with obstacles that he would be risking crashing onto the trees if he were fail to control his movement correctly so without any choice he had to run normally while only using Wind Steps at the suitable moment but to his horror, the sound of steps behind him was getting closer.
Li Kong ransacked his brain for a way out and then he found a vine hanging from a tree and a bold idea came to his mind.
Li Kong unleased his Wind Steps again and right at the moment he reached his highest speed, he jumped with all of his strength and grabbed on one of the vine.
Joy filled his face as he managed to hang on the vine but the roar of the beast quickly awakened him and he hurriedly climbed up as he swayed around.
Fortunately for Li Kong, the vine he had chosen was thick enough to support his weight for a while but Li Kong realized that the vine couldn't last for a long time and when he reached one of the tree's branches, he pulled himself up and sat on the branches, his breathing heavy.
After stabilizing his position, Li Kong searched for the black bear whereabout and the beast slowly walked forward before lifting its chin up to the top of the tree, its eyes met directly with Li Kong.
Faced with the fierce gaze of the bear, Li Kong shuddered a little but still keeping his eyes on the bear's movement.
After a while, the bear seemingly lost interest at Li Kong as it stride away and vanished into the woods.
After waiting for a long time, Li Kong finally dropped down from the tree's branch and observed his surrounding carefully, looking for even the slightest change in the vicinity.
Li Kong heaved a sigh of relief and leaned on a tree, clutching his heart dearly. the clear thump was sent through his skin.
"I almost die!" Li Kong muttered weakly.
"Who told you it was a good idea to mess with a wild animal's offspring?" White let out a scoff and said with a sharp voice. "Next time, think before you did something."
Li Kong completely downtrodden by the chasing could only nodded his head timidly at White's scolding and he wasted no time further and quickly dispersed from the area.
After that, the both of them spent the entire afternoon searching for the but to no avail, not even the sickening scent was detected by Li Kong.
"Argh!!! Where is the altar?! Where is it!!!" Li Kong let out all of his frustration and scrambled his hairs furiously.
"Strange indeed." White muttered quietly.
'Could the altar hadn't been made yet? Then, what are the culprit waiting for?' White worked on his thought. 'There really weren't any pattern within the placement of the altar. The earliest we know was a month ago as being said by the doctor. After that, the second altar was discovered by the lumber jack three weeks ago and then, Li Kong found the third days ago.'
White stopped his reasoning and reviewed his knowledge before continuing.
'When we found the altar, from the state of the corpses, the altar should've been standing for around two or three days. Why is there such a huge gap between the making of the second and third altar and most importantly, why the culprit leave the west last?' White fell into deep thought but was interrupted when suddenly a bush rustled.
The sudden sound made Li Kong jolted in surprise but thanks to Ye Cheng's training had embedded deeply within Li Kong's body, Li Kong immediately went into hiding and masked his presence behind the tree and glanced at the source of the sound.
From the bush, a figure cladded in pure white clothing emerged with bamboo basket hanging from his hand, leaves and small branches of wood sticking to his clothes before he wiped it all off. It was the doctor.
'Doctor? Why is he here? Isn't he usually harvested herbs on the south?' Li Kong was confused but he decided to keep on watching the doctor.
The doctor observed his surrounding for moment as if looking for something and after a long time of searching, the doctor jumped before crouching and plucked out the herbs and transferred it to his basket. The doctor even hummed and smiled happily while he was picking up the herbs.
After the basket full, the doctor stood up and traced back his step and disappeared along the woods.
Li Kong went out from his hiding and looked puzzlingly at the direction where the figure had disappeared to before inspecting the place the doctor had roamed and found nothing of interest.
Li Kong felt a little disappointed and sighed before talking to White, "Let's just go home. There's nothing here, W-"
"There's nothing what?" A warm breath brushed his ears.
"Wah!!!" Li Kong cried out in panic and immediately spun his body and rising up his elbow to strike but his attack was blocked easily.
"Not bad." A hand bulging out with muscles entered Li Kong's vision.
When he realized the sheer muscle mass of the hand, Li Kong carefully scanned the person behind him and to his dismay, it was Ye Cheng.
"U-U-Uncle!!!" Li Kong unknowingly created considerable distance between him and Ye Cheng.
"Yeah. Yeah." Ye Cheng replied as if he was tired of dealing with Li Kong. "What are you doing here and who are you talking to earlier?" Ye Cheng squinted his eyes and scrutinized him.
'Damn it. What do I do now?' Li Kong was raining cold sweats from his forehead.
"Uh... What are you doing here too, uncle?" Li Kong asked innocently.
"I was just hunting like usual... Is that what you want to hear, huh?" Thug-like voice coming out from his uncle's mouth.
Ye Cheng let out a whiff. "Thinking you're smart because you tried to change the topic. You better learn again before doing it."
Caught completely red-handed, Li Kong could only desperately averted his eyes from the glaring look from his uncle.
"Uh, I, I..." Li Kong thought carefully what his next words would be before something lightened up inside of his head. "I take a break from my training! Yeah. I totally do."
"Isn't your training spot on the opposite side?" Ye Cheng himself couldn't believe what Li Kong had just said.
It wasn't raining anymore but Li Kong was flooded with sweats all of his body and he dared not to meet his uncle's scrutinizing gaze.
"T-That because of..." Li Kong's vision was spinning as he tried to come out with an answers and his body trembled subconsciously.
Looking at the youth pathetic state, Ye Cheng let out a loud sigh of resignation before saying, "Whatever. I don't know what you're doing this deep inside of the forest but I'll let this one slide. Now quickly go home. You don't want your uncle Zheng knowing you were this deep inside of the forest, won't you?"
Li Kong basked in relief as his uncle letting him slide off this time and hurriedly nodded at his words but before departing from the place, Li Kong stared at his uncle and asked, "What are you going to do, uncle?"
Ye Cheng flinched a little at the sudden question before turning his head to Li Kong, looking annoyed and irritated.
"What did I say before? Go home." Ye Cheng stretched his closed pal to Li Kong's forehead and flicked on it sending a wave of pain on Li Kong's head.
"Aw!" Li Kong taken back and begrudgingly glared at his uncle. "Why did you do that?"
"You'll be getting more of that if you didn't listen to me. Now shoo shoo, go back to the village. I'm taking care of adult work so the children can go away." As usual, Ye Cheng drove out Li Kong with his hand gesture before mumbling in almost inaudible voice, "Yeah, an adult work." His gaze suddenly became sharp.
After getting flicked on the forehead, Li Kong had started to walking away and grumbled quietly while rubbing his red forehead.
He took a last look at the figure of his robust uncle and a serious look was displayed on top of his face.
Li Kong wondered about what his uncle was thinking about at the last moment before continuing his journey back to the village.
...
After arriving in the village, Li Kong was quickly greeted by Yu Mei who was walking with both of the twin on her hands.
"Xiao Fang!" Li Kong shouted.
"Li Kong!" Xiao Fang relayed the sentiment.
Li Kong opened his arms to the running Xiao Fang, ready to carried him up before suddenly a scene flashed on Xiao Fang's mind and he stopped at his track and hid himself behind Yu Mei's body.
"Pfft." Looking at the figure of blinking Li Kong, Yu Mei couldn't contain her laughter and blurted out.
"Looks like the children had grown wiser of your antics." Yu Mei grinned.
"Bah." Li Kong scoffed. "They just hadn't seen my new tricks yet."
"Yeah, sure. Whatever." Yu Mei couldn't care less about the new tricks he had.
After that, they talked for a while before Li Kong whispered something to Yu Mei and bid farewell to them.
Following soon after, Yu Mei told to both of the twin she had must go so she returned the twin to their parents before walking to somewhere.
...
On the grassy field near the giant tree, Li Kong was moving his head before the figure of the young girl entered his vision and he waved at her.
Noticing the wave, Yu Mei lifted her skirt up and hastened her steps before arriving in front of Li Kong.
"I've been waiting for you. Come here!" Li Kong grabbed her hand and dragged her closer to the tree.
After they had taken a seat, Yu Mei quickly shifted her head to Li Kong and asked, "Did you found altar?"
Li Kong shook his head and explained in detail what he had experienced so far.
"Seriously?" After Li Kong had done explaining, Yu Mei stared at him with an unimaginable astonishment in her eyes.
"You know you don't have to tell me about you getting chased by the bear, right?" With more days passing by, Yu Mei's evaluation of Li Kong's intelligence had gone lower and lower.
Li Kong shrugged which Yu Mei promptly responded by massaging her eyebrows.
'Sometimes I wonder how could I fell for this guy.' Yu Mei lifted her chin to meet the clueless figure of Li Kong. Li Kong noticed her gaze immediately and asked, "What's wrong?" Which Yu Mei replied sulkily by, "Nothing," as she turned her head away from him.
Li Kong's watched upon her with eyes in disbelief and opened mouth before check this occurrence as his list of usual Yu Mei's weird behavior.
The girl opened one of her eyes and peeked at the annoyed boy before faintly chuckled and thought to herself, I guess that's what make him charming?
Love was blind, they said. Sigh...
After that, they discussed with each other before ending in without any conclusions and as the day went darker, they walked back to the village and parted ways, going back to each other home.