The Human Giant



"Knock knock knock!"

Waking up to the sound of urgent knocking at his door, Yoze realized that he was going to have to put the idea of going to a fixing his armor on pause as he noticed that River's spiritual energy was behind his door. 

When Yoze opened his door to greet River he was stunned to see that she was bruised and heavily wounded. She was bleeding so much that she created a small puddle of blood on his doormat.

"What happened to you?"

"I need your help, we were ambushed," River hastily said.

"Why did you come to me instead of the military? They are important goods after all but they aren't related to me anymore." Yoze gestured for her to come inside while asking for more details.

For her to become this injured as a Blood Master, meant that whoever ambushed them must have been strong. Yoze also felt a bit worried since he didn't see Timothy with River.

"I already contacted the government but it will take some time for them to send out a strong enough counterattack, however, by that time Timothy and the others might be dead. That's why I rushed over here to ask for your help." 

"Sit down and rub this medical paste over your wounds. It should help lessen the pain and stop the bleeding. Also, how far away from the city were you ambushed? And how many people were there?" Yoze grabbed some sealed containers of the paste that Leah had used on him when they first met.

"With your speed, it should only take you about 20 minutes to get there. As for how many people there were around 20 Blood Masters all from Martial Art Sects, and I suspect that a few Martial Grandmasters are hiding amongst the crowd." Opening one of the containers, River felt her eyes begin to water due to the bad smell coming from the paste.

The smell was so bad that reasoning told her that there was no way that something that smelled so bad could have been good for her. But River's trust in Yoze made her follow his advice and carefully rubbed some of the paste on a wound across her cheek.

It didn't take long for the River to feel her cheek become itchy and how the pain coming from her cheek quickly disappeared. She even noticed that the wound had stopped bleeding and was slowly healing.

"This paste is incredible, did you make it yourself Scholar Yoze? It's much better compared to the other medicine that I could afford. The only downside is that it's smelly and makes one itchy." Fully convinced that Yoze was a miracle worker, River used all of the paste to cover herself in a thin layer of the smelly paste.

"Not quite, Leah over there helps me make this special paste by stomping on them with his hooves," Yoze answered honestly since he didn't think River would try to steal Leah away from him. 

The paste might have been smelly but for Yoze he felt the smell was worth it since within each one of the paste was years of hard work and knowledge of herbs that a medicine goat could provide. He and Jewel even made sure to use this paste after every one of their training sessions to get rid of their sore muscles and get some relief.

"But let's focus on what matters right now, how do you know there might be a Martial Grandmaster?" Yoze asked seriously.

He had decided the moment River asked him for help, to rescue the soldiers. It wasn't just because he viewed River and Timothy as close acquaintances but also because he wanted to fight some martial artists.

Even though he couldn't confirm that these ambushers were sent out by a martial art sect, Yoze didn't feel that it mattered much. For a force to send out more than 20 Blood Masters and maybe even several Martial Grandmasters signaled to him they were powerful.

Yoze felt his heart race as he was excited at the prospect of being able to fight Martial Grandmasters. All this time he was only able to speculate how strong Martial Grandmasters were.

Now that he had an opportunity to meet not just one but several Martial Grandmasters Yoze took this incredibly seriously. 

"While none of them made a move, I have been lucky to have been a student for a Martial Grandmaster before and got a good sense of the uniqueness of their auras."

"At first, I didn't notice them but Timothy and the others made a plan to create a path to allow me to escape and inform the city. I sensed that right beside me was the unique aura of a Martial Grandmaster." River said cutting out a lot of unnecessary information from her story.

"With your predicament at that time, it should have been easy for that Martial Grandmaster to have stopped you, did you think of a reason why he let you go?" Yoze felt that something was up with this ambush.

If it was he who organized this massive ambush to steal something so life-changing he would have killed everyone last one of the soldiers to stop any information from leaking to the city. He wouldn't have wanted the city or the world to know that he was the cause for making the tens of soldiers and tons of pounds of demon meat disappear without a trace.

For the ambushers to let River go so easily meant that they had more objectives than just stealing valuable goods.

"Yes, when I had told the government about this they also came up with several ideas about why I was allowed to escape. The first reason was to paint a target for the city to unleash its anger and energy on."

"I should tell you that while I was running away one of the ambushers raised a black flag that had a blood-red crossbow on the corner. That was the flag of the Blood Hunter gang and is well-known to be connected to many martial art sects." 

"By painting the Blood Hunter gang as the main face of the ambush, it would give the city hope that they would be able to recover the demon bones and demon neat."

"With hope, they would not want to publicly declare that they had been robbed and what valuable items were stolen, to not increase the number of people and forces that they were in the possession of legendary demon meat." River took a deep breath before continuing.