The Hidden Myth of Ji Dara

Dara looked at his palm, and the hole in the middle closed up right there in front of everyone\'s eyes…

His hand returned to normal since he had pumped Ji Dai full of all the Death Qi within it…

Dara then stood to his feet and looked around at the remaining 120 experts who all dropped their weapons in slow motion before going down on their knees as they surrendered…

Meanwhile…

Whilst all that battle was going on…

Back at the Village of Sang…

Three figures abruptly appeared at the edge of the jungle close to the village entrance before the clearing, and looked towards the village…

Then one of these three figures brought out one mouse looking beast which sniffed the air before squealing something back at the figure who was holding it…

These three figures were all donning black outfits which seemed to have been made from the carcass of a beast which seemed to have been dead a long time before they came across it, but after the rat squealed at them, they returned deep into the jungle before meeting up with a massive army of similar looking figures…

They went past all these figures to the center of the army where three shriveled figures mounting three shriveled wild beast and dropped to their knees, before speaking in foreign tongues which wasn\'t native to any human tribe or village within the Grey and Dark Lands;

One of the figures brought out the same mouse they had brought out earlier, and after the mouse squealed a similar message to these shriveled figures;

Hoaaah!

These figures howled furiously through their hoarse throat before all the army of black figures got to their feet and began to invade the Village of Sang…

"I can\'t wait for the spoils of war the Chief would bring back from their conquest…"

"Hopefully they bring back a lot of young girls… My loins have not seen action in a long while and might be growing stiff!"

Two experts who guarded the entrance of the village gates were busy chatting with one another…

It was deep into the night now, and the black Qi as well as grey fog were already billowing out of the jungle and towards the village, but the ring of fire pit around the village held these black Qi and fog at bay, and as a result, these experts couldn\'t see anything from the pit of fire outwards, which was where the jungle began…

~Hoooo!~

A hoarse howl suddenly echoed out of the jungle as one of the two middle aged man abruptly stopped his laughter;

"Wait!"

"What!?"

"Did you hear that!?"

He conversed with his colleague but despite straining their ears, they couldn\'t hear the initial howl the leader of those figures in the jungle had made earlier…

"Are you getting paranoid again?"

The guard\'s partner joked as they prepared to return to their conversation, but then;

Rumble! Rumble!! Rumble!!!

"Is that an earthquake?"

The partner asked, but the guard listened a little more intently, and that was when his eyes widened in horror;

"No, they are footsteps, we are being invaded!"

He yelled at his partner who took picked up a string which had a ball tied to its end;

He gathered every ounce of strength in his body and threw it way into the jungle before the partner lit up an arrow and fired it;

Whoosh!

The arrows whizzed through the air;

Tack!

It hit a tree as a flint dropped from the flames at the tip of the arrow and onto the ball his partner had slingshot earlier, which apparently contained beast blood;

Kaboom!

A massive explosion that woke the entire village ensued in the jungle as plumes of fire and smoke that were over 20 meters tall erupted from the jungle and instantly, the two guards saw the people who were invading them;

"Obuns!"

He yelled but just as he tried to look at his partner he noticed that a dart of some sort had impaled his partner\'s throat...

Then from the way some black veiny pattern spread from the point of the dart all over his convulsing partner\'s face, the guard knew he had been hit by a poison dart from the poison immune Obuns…

He instantly grabbed a different sort of arrow and aimed straight for the sky before firing it straight into the sly and after reaching a certain height, the arrow exploded into a massive plume of flames that floated in the sky for over 5 minutes before leaving a thick cloud of smoke which was left floating due to the humidity of the atmosphere turning it into a cloud of smoke…

This smoke could be seen as far as Dara\'s settlement, and when the surrendering experts saw this, their faces blanched in fear as they erupted to their feet;

"Obuns are invading!"

They all scrambled to their feet, took their weapons and ran towards Dara whose face darkened and braced for another battle, but just as they got to his position, they simply ran around him and continued on to the entrance of the settlement and left…

Dara managed to grab a young expert amongst the fleet footed men and asked, what is going on;

"Obuns are invading our village, and our families, and loved ones would be helpless because the chief brought 90 percent of our total manpower here…"

"I\'m sorry, but I really have to go; my four year old sister is the only family I have left and she is within the village right now!"

The expert was already shedding tears as he continued his run, but just before he could move, Dara grabbed his arm and pulled him back;

"My route is shorter!" He told the expert before he ran deeper into the settlement before calling out;

"Uncle Min, Aunt Lin, I need you down here right away…"

The duo heard their names and didn\'t waste any time before riding the water wheel down to the base of the plateau, and before they could even descend to the ground, Dara had already dished out instructions;

"Pull off the boulder blocking the spring!"

"What!? There would be catastrophic burst and the pressure might kill anyone in front of it…"

Uncle Min frantically replied as he jumped out of the water wheel bucket before it could even touch the water;

"Do it!" Dara bellowed without sparing a glance at Uncle Min;

"Use the boulder to block the ring of water; that would prevent the ring from flooding!"

He reached the front of the boulder in no time before looking at the expert and saying;

"Do you trust me!?"

"I guess…"

The frantic expert blurted the first statement that came to his mind;

"Do it!"

Dara bellowed once again as Uncle Min wrapped a vine around the boulder and then connected it to the moving water wheel…

Creak! Creak! Creak!

The water wheel squealed under pressure as the weight of the load it was trying to pull was heavier than the momentum the flowing water could provide…

Uncle Min instantly jumped into one of the buckets to add extra weight to the water wheel…

Aunt Lin also did the same and eventually they were able to keep it moving and then the vine was able to simply shift the boulder by half a foot; 

Then the extremely powerful force from the pressurized spring pushed the boulder out of the way as a massive wave of water burst out of the spring...

The gush slammed into Dara who shielded the expert and took the hit from the wave of water, bearing the brunt of the collision as he and the expert were flooded down the initial river which the water initially flowed through…

They were being flushed at almost thrice the normal speed which Dara could move as they cut through the jungle using the same channel with which the water flowed through the entire jungle which cut their distance by three fold…

If one coupled a threefold decrease in distance with a threefold speed, then the amount of time it took the experts to travel from the village to Dara\'s plateau was then reduced by nine fold, as Dara and the expert traveled through the jungle with breakneck speed whilst maneuvering themselves to avoid the occasional boulders or rock that were jutting out of the river channel…

Aunt Lin and Uncle Min watched the duo as they were being flushed out of their sight, and when they looked at the general direction of Dara and the expert, they were able to see the massive plume of smoke in the sky, and they didn\'t need to be a genius to couple it with how frantic the rest of the experts fled the scene;

"There is trouble in the enemy\'s lair!" Uncle Min announced whilst Aunt Lin frowned before asking;

"But why is he rushing into the enemy\'s base?" Uncle Min then went deep in thought before a realization hit him;

"We rescued Dara from a flowing river which was flowing through the valley which came from that direction…"

Uncle Min used his hand to trace a point from the smoke plumes down to the place they were previously living in;

"… and according to him; he said he was being chased by members of his own tribe who were looking to kill him-"

"-Are you trying to say that the place being invaded is the village Dara grew up in?" Aunt Lin didn\'t even let Uncle Min finish before chipping in;

"Yes, I believe so…"

"Moreover, from the way he kept slaughtering all these men; especially those three old men and that kid, it wouldn\'t be farfetched to say these people were the tribe members he was referring to…" Uncle Min continued;

"But why would he be helping those who are trying to kill him?" Aunt Lin asked in confusion...

"How am I supposed to know that? But one thing I know for sure is that, there is always a bit of good in a ton of bad and vice versa…"

"Maybe the village still holds a place in his heart, after all, he grew up there…." Uncle Min added;

"I think we should tag along just in case-"

"-That wouldn\'t be needed, we would just become an extra burden if we do that…" Uncle Min begged to differ;

"Moreover, he was able to kill their head which I believe is the strongest expert in the village, so I don\'t think there is anyone in that village who can possibly defeat him…"