45 Three tempered honey (1/2)
Bai Yun looked at the bee's queen and the various worker bees that were flying about. He watched them for a while trying to find out about their behavior and patterns that they had.
Bai Yun noticed that the queen bee was mostly sitting there and letting the worker bees do most of the work. The bees also had patterns to their movement. Once he observed them for a wile, he was ready to move.
Bai Yun took out a qi replenishing pill and put it in his mouth, ready to swallow it ata moments notice. He then slowly crept out of the tunnel, and crawled forward toward the bees. They hadn't noticed him yet due to his skills as well as their tasks.
Bai Yun came as close as he could before the bees would sense him. He waited under the honey wall cutout for a chance to strike and kill as many bees as he could in the initial strike.
As he watched, the critical moment came in a few minutes. The bees were flying around and they lined up in front of him by chance.
Bai Yun did not waste this chance and moved in an instant, casting both wind motion as well as a ray of moonlight simultaneously. His sword cut four bees that were standing in his path before anyone reacted to him.
Only then did the rest of the bees find out about the intruder in their midst. Bai Yun did not waste their silence, and ran towards the other before they reacted. It was only after two more bees had been cut down did the queen bee scream, and the rest of the worker bees attacked him.
After spending so much qi, Bai Yun's reserves were empty, so he immediately swallowed the pill in his mouth. Qi quickly started to fill his dantian. The amount of qi in the pill was more than what he could hold so he started at attack and move rapidly, lest the qi be wasted. Since the bees were scattered around the room, and it took a while for them to come together, he started to pick them off one by one.
By the time the qi replenishing pill had run out of energy, he had killed nine more bees, reducing the number of bees to thirteen. But by now they had all surrounded him. Thankfully his qi reserves were full, or else he would be dead even faster.
The queen bee realized that the situation had changed. Not only had the intruder been surrounded, he also seem to have run out of steam. So the queen bee simply laid back and screeched orders at its workers. Even though it was relaxed, its eyes were filled with hatred towards the intruder that had killed more than half of its workers. The standoff between Bai Yun and the bees continued for a few minutes, with him trying to find a fault in their formation, and the bees trying to kill him.
All of a sudden BaiYun's eyes were drawn to his sword. He saw that his sword had become even more cracked than before. With each collision with the stingers of the bees, especially those of the second circle, the condition of his sword became much worse.
Bai Yun had been a swordsman for tens of thousands of years. A single look was enough for him to realize that the sword would only last one more hit.
He smiled wryly as the realization hit him. It seemed as if he would not be able to kill any more bees. If he did not want to die and be disqualified, he would have to retreat immediately. Once his sword broke, he would not be able to hold the second circle bees back.
In that instant Bai Yun felt as if time had stopped. He looked around at the thirteen bees that had surrounded him, his eyes scouring every single one of them. He could see their wings moving in slow motion, beat by beat. He saw their eyes, red from anger. He saw their stingers thrusting straight at him. There was no way for him to kill of them. He needed a large area attack even to hold them back and escape.
Bai Yun then thought of the second move of the moonlight sword, rain in the moonlight. It was an area attack, but something he had yet to master. He could barely trigger it properly, and even when he did so, something was blocking the move, making him unable to bring out its true strength.
Bai Yun grit his strength, and decided to use it anyway. His strength was nearly not enough to escape. If he used it, he would be at least able to push away the bees, so that he could run away. Without mastering it, using it would only cause him to waste a lot of energy, and not deal any damage. But he had no choice. He needed a moment to run.
Without waiting for it, he cast rain under the moonlight. Rain under the moonlight was a move that dispersed the strength of the sword into multiple thrusts. If a ray of moonlight focused all the energy of the castor into a single point and thrust the sword forward at great speed, then a rain under the moonlight split that energy into multiple pieces, and let it disperse in multiple thrusts that came one after the other. Each of the thrusts were much weaker than a ray of moonlight, but when huge number of came one after the other, it allowed one to rapidly send attacks in any direction as they please.
Bai Yun had only started to study the sword technique recently. The techniques that he studied in his past life consisted of very different principles, thus he he found it a bit difficult to comprehend the technique at first.
Bai Yun attacked the bees one by one, pushing them back and hurting them in the process. With each attack, the bees were pushed back and Bai Yun gained a little more breathing room.