Red Talon Piercing The Darkness

Hong Zhao looked down at the forest floor and saw a clearing. He gestured to Ren Cai that it was time for them to stop for the night. Dropping from the trees, Hong Zhao used his devouring qi claws to chop a few branches on his way down. Chopping them further, he tore the bark off to use it as kindling and started a small fire. He then took out the beast corpses and began skinning them and gutting them. As he did, Ren Cai took out a medium sized pot and put it over the fire. She chopped up carrots and potatoes, sprinkling seasoning in the pot and adding water. As the water was added, the pot began to steam slightly. Hong Zhao sliced off forearm sized portions of meat and gave it to Ren Cai to add to the stew.

Soon there was a pleasant aroma within their camp. It was a far cry from the food they ate at the inn back at the village of Naje, yet it was still enough to make Hong Zhao's mouth water while waiting.

Instead of waiting impatiently for the stew to finish, Hong Zhao used his devouring qi claws to gouge out the beast cores from the foreheads of the beasts. As far as he could tell, the three beasts were all at least at the fourth star disciple rank. "The beasts keep getting stronger the closer we get to the city." He mused as he examined the beast cores.

"Well yeah," Ren Cai said bluntly as she sliced the strips of meat into chunks to add to the pot. "The beasts own this world, so it's only natural that they get stronger the closer we get to Yuan City." She seasoned the meat as she threw it in the pot, sending out an even nicer aroma.

Hong Zhao shrugged as he took out a few ingots of iron from the ring that old man Xinyue had given him. Then he also grabbed the third star disciple ranked sword from his ring. Using his flame elemental qi, he heated the metal of the sword until it glowed white. While it was searing white, he held it up with his qi and crushed a beast core, sprinkling the contents onto the sword, the white blade glowed blue for a moment. While the blade was still hot, Hong Zhao made minor adjustments to the edge, making it serrated, the same as he did with the knife. Though it was something this world had never seen before, he could vouch for the lethal force such weapons had. It was this type of weapon that left irreparable damage within the body while exiting a wound. Unless someone were to cut the weapon out the other way, the edge would always tear out chunks of the meat within a person upon exit.

Examining the final works, Hong Zhao nodded as he sliced the air in front of him. His eyes glowed as he listened to the blade whistle past. It was perfect. Looking over at Ren Cai, Hong Zhao smiled. He wanted to do something for her as well, seeing as though she still didn't have a weapon. "What am I making you?" He asked simply.

"What are you talking about?" Ren Cai looked up from the pot with a questioning glance.

"If you were to have any weapon from earth aside from guns, what would it be?"

Ren Cai's eyes lit up as she thought. She never would have guessed that Hong Zhao would just make her something out of the blue. In Yuan City, such weapons would cost thousands of gold. Yet he was just going to make one for her? "I wouldn't say no to an Odachi." She said as she contemplated for a time.

"You wish for a samurai sword within a world of Chinese?" Hong Zhao nearly lost his composure, yet when he saw Ren Cai's childish plea, he smiled instead.

Taking two more iron ingots from his storage ring, Hong Zhao used his fire elemental qi to melt the metal and send it in front of him. Using his extensive knowledge of weaponry from earth, he formed the long blade of the odachi. It looked slightly crude at first, until Ren Cai came over to advise him on what it should look like. After it was finished, Hong Zhao took another block of wood and carved it down into a sheath, then he sanded it down, painted it and polished the sheath until it gleamed in the firelight. After this was done, he focused on the sword's hilt. Using another bar of iron, he formed the guard and attached it to the blade, and then sliced down more wood, sanding it down to make a proper hilt. Then the took strips of the fierce beast's hide that he had killed earlier and wove it into the hilt. When he was done, the odachi looked like something out of an eastern movie.

Ren Cai looked at the blade as if she were hypnotized by it. "I've wanted one of these even since I was on earth." She said with a smile. "I might need to grow into it, but I'm sure that won't be a problem for long." Her eyes lit up brighter than the fire as she reached out for the hilt which fit perfectly into her hand. Though the blade was almost as tall as her, it seemed to be made just for her which, of course, it was.

Hong Zhao smiled as he watched her admire her new blade. "That odachi is a fourth star disciple ranked weapon. So even though you are still of the ninth star student rank, you should still be able to fight on par with me. Unless of course you wish to be a disciple ranked cultivator with me."

Ren Cai chuckled slightly as she heard Hong Zhao's comment. "I'm already a second star disciple ranked cultivator. I just got a qi suppresser of my own some time ago."

Hong Zhao's eyes widened slightly when she said this. He needed to remember that there still was a lot about Ren Cai that he didn't know about. Though they had become fairly good friends within the last close to half year, she still was within the same occupation he was in. She was only helping him right now to benefit herself. Though he couldn't fault her for it, he also couldn't trust her because of it.

After examining their blades, Hong Zhao sat down and enjoyed the company of Ren Cai as they feasted on the stew she had prepared. Now they had new weapons, as well as appeased appetites. After a quick rest, they would be ready to go once again. And soon, they would be at the gates to Yuan City.