5 ... MY HAND SLIPPED... (1/2)
Spirit Beasts were creatures that could cultivate. As a result, most of them were in fact really intelligent. Many types of Spirit Beasts existed: some were humanoid while many others were not.
The first Spirit Beasts had appeared eons earlier and had been beings spawned by the energy of the world itself; they had been the Primordial Beasts, led by their Four Primordial Emperors. Descendants of the Four Primordial Emperors had been the Four Divine Beasts, the Divine Kings of Worldslord Island. Except for the four of them, the offspring of the other Primordial Beasts became known as Heavenly Beasts.
Unlike humans who had no inborn or unique abilities, the bloodlines of Spirit Beasts alone gave them an advantage over the common man. With few exceptions, even the weakest Spirit Beast would be innately much stronger than any human. However, the humanoid form was one that had many benefits that beasts spanning whole mountain ranges had not. For this reason, once a Beast had grown powerful enough it would usually take on a human form and only bring out its true shape during a fight or to posture.
The Ironskin Manrat; the name itself was pretty self-explanatory. It was a humanoid Spirit Beast with extremely durable skin, so durable in fact that even the sharpest blades would bounce straight off.
Most did not even possess a powerful cultivation base, but simply by relying on their sturdy defense allowed them to take on cultivators that did, even if just barely. Strictly speaking, Cheng Hao and Goldy had been extremely unlucky with the spell formation responsible for randomly creating the test room: let alone a cultivationless kid, the standard Inferior Stage cultivator would have trouble fighting off the beast too!
Not that either of them seemed to care…
”Cheng Hao, you traitorous bastard! How shameless of you to bring this beast along so as to fight me with sheer numbers! Ah…” Goldy shook his head with a sigh, ”I never expected such cowardly actions from you, but such is the curse of the mighty…”
Cheng Hao had clearly had enough of that blabbermouth of a snake he had for a companion. After nonchalantly throwing the cursing golden snake into the closest pillar he glared at him coldly.
”Goldy, I'll leave you at your one, only job here.” Having said that, he took out the yellowish crystal marble from his pocket and turned his head towards the dragon. ”You Bastard Snake, won't disappoint me… will you?”
Having sensed a somewhat bloodthirsty aura surrounding the young boy, Goldy felt shivers running down his spine. ”Well damn,” he muttered with furrowed brows. ”And here I thought you had gotten soft! Cheng Hao or not, your killing intent is still the real deal…”
Noticing the youth still staring at him expressionlessly, the small dragon nodded and immediately shot forward.
”Sorry, did I make you wait?” Cheng Hao turned around.
”Did you eat something weird before coming here? You were having pretty bad hallucinations back there...” The Spirit Beast was still a bit confused and he seemed to feel pity for the child in front of him.
”Nah, I just had to listen to a small golden snake for a few months… It was probably the fatigue from that time acting up.” the golden-eyed youth shrugged his shoulders.
”Uh… That, uhm… sucks, I guess?” Despite not really understanding what he was saying, the Ironskin Manrat seemed to feel the pain coming from Cheng Hao. After thinking for a while, it even scratched his chin and asked, ”You really want to do this man? You could, like, rest a few more hours if you want? I'm in no hurry after all…”
”Oh? Well, that's really nice of you!” Cheng Hao smiled. ”However…” Suddenly, he waved his arm: The golden marble in his hand began to melt and the liquid reformed into twelve golden crystal swords, each as tall as a person! Under the shocked eyes of the Manrat, the twelve weapons started hovering behind the smiling child like twelve bloodthirsty flying beasts.
In this world of cultivation, there were of course many kinds of weapons a person could use. Sword, axes, bows, spear, halberds, mops, tables, defenestration... If you could name it, it was very likely there would be at least one cultivator that based his or her entire cultivation method around it!
However, once one reached a certain level, one would find that simple weapons made out of iron or other simple metal alloys simply weren't enough! For that reason, cultivators had created the so-called Flying Weapons: made out of countless precious materials, these weapons were capable of splitting mountains apart with a single slash, as well as bringing the power of weapon-based cultivation techniques to the next level.
However, Flying Weapons were extremely expensive and rare! The reason was that the materials varied from simple ones such as ores, to beast Cores, horns, scales, bones and such; only experts could afford to gather these materials, and as such the demand alone was sky high. Of course, some had seen this as an opportunity to get rich and thus mass-produced Flying Weapons as a living, but they would be low-grade flying swords, hardly any different from simple iron blades enhanced with some kind of floating magic.
Right now, Cheng Hao was using the golden drop of blood as if it were a Flying Sword. As the drop was of extremely high quality, it was way stronger than normal Flying Swords! Most probably, there was not a single Flying Sword in its current plane of existence that could keep up with a single of those twelve golden blades! Until Cheng Hao entered a higher plane, very few people would be able to overpower him if he had that golden drop of blood at hand and a decent enough cultivation!
As for using it on an Ironskin Manrat that had yet to start cultivating? Bullying the shit out of it wouldn't be enough to describe what would happen.
”Thanks for your offer buddy… but I am obliged to decline. I just really can't stay here… and that means getting rid of you right here, right now.” Cheng Hao sighed and as he looked at the shocked Ironskin Manrat, his thin lips arranged into an apologetic smile. ”Unfortunately, there is no other way and I'll have to dirty my hands this time. Do not worry though! As an apology, I'll be sure you'll die a peaceful death...”