Dragon's Soul Chapter 2: Strength

Then Zhang would proceed with his daily routine of running from his home to the hill and back.

If someone were to watch him, they won't think he was carrying so many extra weights, because Zhang was running so fast it looked like he was gliding a bit off the ground.

After one hundred laps, he tossed away the weights which made a heavy thump sound as they hit the ground.

"Time to get heavier weights", he sighed.

It had been six years since Zhang started training his body instead of his inner essence. His current strength could be considered monstrous for a sixteen years old, if one were to compare his strength with someone training inner essence he would be around a level five.

This would place him at the level of a regular full grown adult in their prime. Although he was still a little bit off from the ultimate limit of a regular person.

For the last six years he never bothered taking the essence exam again, mainly because there was really no exact way to measure his strength. If he were to sprinkle his blood on the reading crystal, it would still read an essence level of one.

Thus it was pointless to take the exam and being laughed at for his low level, so Zhang would rather spend that time training.

After weight training he would walk up to a cauldron filled to the brim with iron sand. Zhang was currently training his fingers to achieve a technique that would make his fingers hard as iron.

This technique required Zhang three years of grueling hard work to accomplish. Although he was already at the last level of the "Iron Fingers" technique, Zhang kept practicing hoping to even further strengthen his fingers.

He had long ago mastered the two sword forms his teacher had taught him. Now, the swords had become like extensions of his arms. Zhang preferred the dual swords technique the most. His father had found him a pair of swords made of "Blood Iron".

Blood iron was unbelievably hard, even harder than steel. This was due to how it was made. When a swordsmith was forging blood iron they would have to forge their blood into the iron in flames formed using their cultivation base. The blood would mix with the iron and add a part of the swordsmith's essence and vitality into it. This made the weapons made out of blood iron a fourth tier weapon. Which would make them very good weapons. Since weapons were classed the same as the levels of cultivation.

Swords such as these were fairly rare and not many smiths were able to make them. So eventually the method to make them was lost.

As a stroke of luck Zhang's father had acquired them in a faraway village on one of his business trips. He spent a sizable sum of money before the previous owner was willing to part with them. But what was money to Blue Tear city's richest man.

The swords had a bloody red sheen in contrast with its black blade. A murderous aura was given off every time they were unsheathed. This showed that countless lives had been taken by these swords over the years.

As he was practicing his swordplay, Zhang noticed that someone was watching him.

Actually he knew who it was, it was Ling. Shortly after he has started training six years ago, Ling would come every day to watch him.

He, out of the corner of his eye, could see her sitting intently watching him.

She wore elegant white robes, that complimented her glossy long black hair. With cherry colored lips, flawless snow white skin, and beautiful hazel colored eyes.

Ling was currently hailed as Blue Tear City's genius, and it's most beautiful young maiden with many suitors trying to win her favour.

Her essence level was currently five, and a few months ago she received an invitation from the Royal Academy to join them when the new school year started.

The general laughed and pulled out a piece of red crystal shaped like a heart. This was called a "Soul Stone" and had the power to absorb essence. He hovered the stone over the corpse and a bluish light came out and flew into the crystal turning a small part of it purple.

This was Liu Bei's soul, theoretically speaking, a soul was made up of pure essence. The stronger a soul was the more essence it contained.

Tonight each and every soldier of the Siwang Empire was given a soul stone. Their mission was to slaughter every person within the city and to collect their souls.

These soul stones would be sent back to the empire for the emperor to use and increase his power.

Soon, the city was filled anguished screams.

Zhang was awoken in the middle of the night due to the screams and ran out of his room seeing his family's servants hurriedly packing things.

His father came running holding his mother's hand. "Zhang pack lightly we are leaving, soldiers from the Siwang Empire have invaded and they are indiscriminately slaughtering people. We are going to escape from the city with the Wu Clan through our clan's underground tunnels."

The Zhou and Wu clan had jointly built a system of underground tunnels that leads out of the city and were connected to safe houses throughout the city. The tunnels' existence was only known by certain members of each of the respective clans.

Soldiers were attempting to knock down the gates to the Zhou Clan.

Loud bangs could be heard as the gate was being struck. Eventually, although the gate was really solid it broke from the hinges and slammed to the ground.

After the gates fell, soldiers rushed into the mansion. Where they were met with the Zhou clan's private army.

Composed of three hundred elite soldiers the clan had trained for many years, the Siwang Empire's foot soldiers met a quick end.

The same thing happened at the Wu residence, but instead of three hundred soldiers there were one thousand two hundred soldiers. Both clans were a force to be reckoned with in Blue Tear City.

The Wu clan was able to quickly gather their belongings, ran into the tunnels and sealed the entrance.

Whereas the Zhou clan wasn't as fortunate, after defeating the first wave of soldiers, cavalry soldiers from the Siwang Empire rushed in and quickly dispersed throughout the mansion.

Zhang's parents were in the process of unlocking the entrance to the tunnel when horsemen charged into the courtyard.

Zhang jumped at one of them and silently slit the man's throat through the opening in his armor.

He screamed, "Mother, Father!! Go!! I'll keep them here, I'll catch up to you soon."

His father knew the seriousness of the situation, but he had faith in his son's abilities so he took his wife's hand and dashed into the tunnel.

Zhang unsheathed his swords and was ready to dispatch of anyone who would try to go into the tunnel.

There were at least twenty cavalry soldiers facing Zhang. He gracefully dashed at them. He threw one of his swords with a deadly precision. The sword soared through the air and pierced a soldier's neck. The sword was thrown with such force that it also knocked the man off his horse.

The other soldiers were utterly stunned.

What they failed to realize was that when Zhang had thrown his sword, he did not stop and kept running while slashing the legs of their horses.

Without them knowing what had happened, their horses began to, one by one, slump on the ground, making some of the soldiers lose balance and fall towards the ground.

Once they had fallen to the ground Zhang took advantage of them and quickly dispatched them to afterlife.

It did not take him long to kill all the twenty soldiers.

One would think that Zhang would be scared because this was his first time killing anyone.

But actually, Zhang was used to death, he would often dreamed of the man killing him with a knife.

This was the same at that but he was the one who did the killing, a part of himself seemed to encourage this.

After killing all twenty soldiers, before Zhang could even catch his breath, many more rushed into the courtyard.

There was no end to the soldiers coming into the courtyard and soon there wasn't enough space for more come in.

Facing such a large group of enemies, most people would be scared out of their wits, but Zhang wasn't like most people.

Rather, he was mapping out how to best face this group of enemies.

He knew if he even let one soldier pass, his family would be in danger. So he punched his arm into the wall collapsing it into the tunnel.

The soldiers lifted their shields and went into formation, boxing Zhang in from three sides.

Zhang jumped into the sky and as he landed he did a horizontal slash and cut one of the soldiers into two.

And as soon as his feet touched the ground he started to sprint while slashing wildly at the soldiers.

Some soldiers lost their limbs due to the sharpness of Zhang's sword, others lost their lives. None of them were left unharmed as Zhang ran past them.

The soldiers soon realized they were no match for this youth and began falling back and rearranging their formation. Archers started coming in behind them and shoot countless arrows at Zhang.

Zhang was able to dodge and parry some of the arrows but against a large number such as this it was impossible for someone at his level to come out unscathed.

An arrow landed and stuck itself into Zhang's shoulder, then another into his leg, and another and another. Soon he became riddled in them.

The soldiers couldn't believe that Zhang was still standing with so many arrows pierced in him. They winced imaging the amount of pain he was in, but actually Zhang could not feel a thing.

He was born not being able to feel pain luckily.

But he felt tired, fighting hundreds of opponents alone was easier said than done. Nonetheless, he stood his ground and continued fighting.

The soldiers had reported back to the golden general and he was on his way to where Zhang was.

What the golden general saw when he arrived was horrifying.

Zhang's body was covered in arrows and a few spears were stabbed into his back while sitting on a small hill of corpses.

The general knew he had to kill Zhang and quickly. He gathered essence in his palm which ignited into a flame. He is in fact a Mage and one at the 8th level that specializes in fire magic.

A massive fireball flew across the courtyard and smashed into Zhang throwing him off the hill of corpses and smashing him into a wall knocking him unconscious.

Believing Zhang to be dead, the commander ordered another squad of soldiers to come in and collect the bodies of the dead soldiers.

Some of the bodies were cut into mush, none of them were left intact. The most horrifying thing was some of them weren't dead just cleaved into two at the hip.

The general walked up to Zhang, ignited another fire ball and was about turn Zhang into ashes. When he suddenly heard a voice.

The voice sounded ancient, at first he wasn't able to make out where or what the voice was saying. Just random words in no particular order.

After a while he was able to make out what it was saying.

"Guess I will help you this time, for awakening me from my death-like sleep." The voice said.

And instantly Zhang's body ignited and was covered by pitch black fire.

The general jumped back and launched his fire ball at Zhang, which seemed to be swallowed by the black fire.

Zhang's body began to rise as if some unknown force was lifting him up or as if a puppeteer was manning his puppet.

He flew toward the general at high speed and swung his sword. The general parried his strike but the pure power behind it numbed the general's arms.

Zhang continued his onslaught of slashes that seemed to follow no style or technique.

The general's armor was covered in cut marks, some pieces were even falling off.

The general used fire magic and infused it with his sword, igniting the sword. He was barely able to fight evenly with Zhang even though he could not sense any essence in Zhang's sword strikes, just pure physical strength.

He knew that if he dragged the fight on he would be no match for Zhang so he quickly ordered all of his soldiers to charge.

The general knew that he was not a match for Zhang one on one, but when it was ten on one or a hundred on one he definitely would be at an advantage..

But as soon as they surrounded Zhang the devilish black fire began lashing out like whips. Whoever was touched by it slumped over and fall lifeless onto the ground.

This terrified the general. Suddenly Zhang's speed increased, it looked as if he was teleporting and before long ended up in front of the general and slashed off his arm.

He knew he couldn't beat Zhang at that point so instead he stood still. Zhang had appeared in front of him once more and lunged the sword into his heart.

He, then, used all his might to pull Zhang closer to him and pulled out a soul stone from his pocket and smashed it with his remaining hand.

"Haha if I'm going to die I'll take you with me." He screamed.

The soul stone emitted a massive explosion that rocked the whole city.

Normally this would not happen, but the general was a level 8 Mage and used all the essence he had left to ignite countless souls that was in the soul stone.

The whole Zhou mansion and a good part of the city was gone. Only a massive crater was left.

Chapter end