Lu Biming stood there in shock for a moment, face collapsing, before staring at his three disciples. They were clearly all there, no matter who did it, the other two should have been able to prevent it…unless, was it that kid again???? His eyes landed on Hui, who was still holding the oil barrel, staring innocently back at him.
"QIONG. HUA!!!!!"
He didn't even bother saving anything from the steadily growing fire, no matter what he did at this point, unless he could summon droves of water, he couldn't stop it. His spiritual roots were fire and wind, so they were completely useless for this. Hui, seeing him march over, threw the barrel to Gu Feng to hold and took off running into the woods.
However, her incomplete qinggong could only get her so far, before the master had already caught ahold of her, grabbing her by her collar, he dragged her back to the housing and snatching a large thick cane from his spacial ring, he threw her to the ground, raising it above his head for a huge smack. Hui curled into a ball, getting ready to take the blow. She had good experience in this from getting beaten by Li Haoli so much.
She took the first one like a champ, and the second one too, each one leaving behind large red marks, even breaking the skin a bit. However, after the fifth blow, she was already spent, and could hardly hold her body together, or continue to stand from his harsh blows.
However, her master's 6th blow could never fall, because right then, a hearty old voice questioned from above. "What is this Brother Biming?"
Lu Biming looked up only to see, to his horror, that it was the sect master currently descending from the sky. He straightened up, pulling his sleeves back down, pretending he hadn't just lost his temper over a little girl. "Hmph, just disciplining a disciple of my sect!"
"Don't you think your discipline is a little too much?" The sect master combed his hand through his long beard, looking down at Hui, who was still curled into a ball, the cuts and bruises from his blows, showing through her now torn garments. Lu Biming glanced down as well, just now noticing that he'd used a good 5% of his power in each blow. (enough to kill some mortal men with one blow) The girl hadn't made any noise, so he'd thought it wasn't that hard, but now that he inspected, he realized just how many bones he'd already broken, and the fact that literally every place he'd hit was now bleeding uncontrollably.
Hui, seeing that the sect leader had arrived, didn't lose the opportunity and quickly stumbled to her feet despite the pain and rushed off into the woods. Lu Biming didn't feel like he could chase her at this point with the sect master's judgmental stare on him (how did she even move with her body in that state?) and instead turned to Gu Feng. "Go catch her and bring her back!" Gu Feng disappeared into the woods after her.
"Look what you've done!" Complained the old sect leader. "Now you've made her all scared of you!" He sighed. "Haven't you thought of how hard her life must have been before this, to take your blows so well??"
Lu Biming realized he'd definitely gone a bit too far, so he bowed. "Look, Elder brother, I didn't want her to begin with, since I've done such a terrible job taking care of her, why don't you send her to another peak?"
"No!" The Sect leader adamantly refused. "You absolutely are not allowed to throw her onto someone else! You must learn to have patience with your disciples! Temper your own character! Perhaps it will be able to bring you to a new realm in cultivation!"
Lu Biming was really frustrated at this point. He sighed, only to see Gu Feng come out of the woods, empty handed.
"Where is she?" He demanded of Gu Feng, Gu Feng shrugged helplessly.
"I'm sorry, master, she just disappeared. I lost track of her."
"She's literally dribbling blood everywhere! How could you possibly lose track of her?!!"
Li Yueming was still munching on his carrots from the sidelines. If he'd realized having a junior sister would bring this much chaos to their quiet mountain (in case you forgot, it's still a hill) he would've got one earlier. He loved the quiet, but he loved quietly watching chaos unfold even more.
Gu Feng scratched his head, guiltily. "She has this weird way she runs, jumping from tree to tree, so finding the blood drops is like finding squirrels, they're there, and then they're not there…"
Lu Biming raised his hand to hit him over the head, only for him to see the sect leader out of the corner of his eyes, and innocently change it to covering his mouth for a small cough. "Right right, any disciple might lose a 6 year old mortal running with broken bones, and open wounds through a forest while chasing after them. Any. disciple." He had a hard time saying those words.
The sect leader was looking down at him accusingly. He hurriedly bowed to him, explaining. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go find my disciple and…make sure to tend. her. wounds." So many hard words to say today. He jumped away into the woods. However, no matter how long the three of them scrounged the woods, they couldn't find hide nor hair of her the entire night.
---
Meanwhile, Hui had just escaped Lu Biming, heading into the woods, she felt Gu Feng coming after her, but a couple twists and turns, and eventually dodging under him and doubling back, she was finally able to knock him off her trail. She sloppily hopped her way down the mountain finally, but she could feel the wounds getting to her, and could barely keep her eyes open, blood streaming down her face from some cut on her forehead. Finally her foot slipped, and she tumbled off the branch, onto the ground, falling onto the side of a path in front of someone, currently enjoying a peaceful night walk. She tried to stand up, to race back into the woods, but she was already unable to see due to the blood in her eyes, and her legs had already stopped listening to her, each of them pointing in unnatural directions, bending at the wrong spots.
The man currently on the walk, gasped at the sight of her, hurriedly coming over. She tried to keep him away, slicing at him with her nails and snapping her teeth, but he quickly grabbed hold of her, immobilizing her, as he lifted her up from the ground into his arms.
She felt a warm hand stroking her wet forehead, pulling her hair out of her face and then a familiar calm voice broke through her panic, slowly soothing her. "It's okay, it's okay, I'm not gonna hurt you, it's alright." She immediately stopped trying to escape, and instead cuddled deeper into the embrace, latching onto his robe tightly.