His eyes rested on the intruder that had snuck all the way into the inner sanctuary. Apart from the hideous mask, their outward appearance fit the descriptions of the barbarian he had. Their weak bodies clad in plates of earth- and even heaven-grade treasures.
"You have caused quite a lot of trouble..." the abbot muttered as his hand guided the power of virtue generated by their sheep into the remaining young monks. The sacrifices of the disciples had strengthened them to the peak of the Spirit Severing Realm, but it was not enough.
He needed them to break through to the Dao Seeking Realm, so they could assist him in taking down the fiendish tree wreaking havoc on the sect and clawing at their very foundation. Once he had taken care of the intruder, they would distract the tree, while he would go to peel its roots from their spirit vein.
"...this ends now," he lowered his hands after creating a steady flow that would work for a while even without his attention. He finally turned his attention to the intruder, who had been rambling unintelligible chants since answering him.
His old bones creaked as he circulated immortal essence through his muscles. It had been a while since he personally fought, but it would not take long. As his skin gained a golden glow and the strength of a heavenly treasure, the hall suddenly fell silent.
The ubiquitous chants of prayer cauldrons had stopped. The white noise that had filled the hall of the great inner sanctum was gone, and the silence hit him like a strike to the face. The intruder's ramblings had fallen silent, too. An almost imperceptible foreign energy had spread through the hall.
"What have you done..." he muttered inadvertently, his divine sense spreading through the hall, checking each prayer cauldron. In this very moment, they all collapse. The light of virtue emitted from their sheep ceased, and they slumped down lifelessly, only propped up by the prayer frame. In a moment of negligence, their lives had been whisked away by the intruder.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" he exclaimed once again, realizing the tremendous loss. As the thick golden energy of virtue was guided into his disciples, the air in the hall quickly cleared without any more being supplied.
The efforts of decades, of careful curation, selection, and training were gone in the blink of an eye. How rare was the Virtuous Physique? How great the loss of so many furnaces. How could this have happened?
His lips vanished into a line as he looked at the intruder in seething anger. Maybe it was his oversight, his tardiness. But all he could think about was punishing the culprit. Immortal Essence circulating through his legs, he charged at the foe with the 9 Steps of Huddba.
...
Cade was honest when she answered. She felt true regret that she had to enter and witness this place. After appraising the people in the room, Cade realized that they were little more than empty shells, like dead beings bound to the mortal plane against their will.
Their bodies and minds were completely broken, like machines reprogrammed to live and breathe for the sole purpose of chanting. Day and Night, for as long as their rotting bodies could go on. At the same time, it was this chanting and the energy they created that kept them from completely falling apart.
There was no salvation for these souls, except true release. Cade knew what she had to do, but that didn't make it easier. Without
While the Abbot treated her like a fly on the wall, Cade cast an illusion spell that filled the hall, excepting the abbot and the two monks from its effects. Field of Dreams trapped the target in an illusion of their greatest desires.
A last moment of happiness was all the Rakshasi could grant them. That moment when they all vanished in an illusion, the chanting stopped, and it was a wrench that was thrown in the gears. The machines with the sole purpose of chanting stalled and ultimately broke down as a vicious cycle was broken.
Like dominoes, they all fell in a chain reaction of death that moved through the hall like a wave. The abbot stared at the scene in shock. Cade looked at it with regret. The abbot muttered something she couldn't understand.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" he repeated himself clearly this time and instantly appeared in her face. She barely saw him move, but she was able to cross her arms to block his palm strike just in time.
It was the same energy attack she had seen early from one of the guardian monks. A massive golden palm struck her and catapulted her out of the exit. She crashed into the gates and blew them away like a human battering ram.
The palm turned the entrance into a palm-shaped hole before proceeding onward. Outside, Cade finally managed to parry and evade to the side, while the palm barreled through the buildings of the inner sect, growing bigger the further it went.
"Greater Burden, Pitiful Weakness, Blight, Cloud Eyes, Soul of Thorns..." Cade's momentary emotions were blown away by the sudden outburst of battle. Her mind instantly went into battle mode, and she began quickcasting a row of curses and illusion spells she could fire at a rapid pace.
It just showed the difference between the abbot and her previous opponents. The others couldn't even begin to resist her magic thanks to her legendary equipment. Despite that, Abbot Shi was able to resist or partially resist a couple. As expected of someone recognized as a boss by the system.
"You vermin!" the abbot exclaimed in reaction to her curses. her began swinging his hands, drawing glistening lines of golden light in the air, creating an intricate pattern at tremendous speed. "Cleansing of the Quintuple Faced Huddba!" he exclaimed, and the net of power collapsed on himself.
She couldn't check his status, but she could feel that the aura of her curses had vanished. It didn't matter. Before the man could strike at her again, she had already recast the slew of curses. With the legendary armor, she could not only rapid-fire most of her low to mid-tier curses, but the curses left also lowered the target's resistance to curses with every hit.
The frighteningly powerful Abbot attempted to charge forward, but stumbled like the old man he looked like, as all his stats had suddenly lowered. He also burst in purple, cursed flames, and suffered several other DOT effects, chipping away at his body.
His eye, glinting with golden light, focused on her with hatred. A man preaching peace was looking at her like a wild bull seeing a matador. Cade was about to relax when his muscles flexed, bursting the robes apart.
Although his face was that of an old man, the robe had been hiding the steeled muscles of a hunk. But blasting his robes was not just to show off. As he flexed his muscles, a guttural shout escaped his throat, and a golden aura exuded from his body, not just covering and shielding it, but emanating like a halo.
Cade didn't need to see his status to know what was going on. The fact that the aura actually managed to push away the purple flames, stopping them from eating away at his skin, was enough to show the change.
The abbot didn't try to get rid of the curses anymore; he just made up for it!
Then the grandpa-faced hunk charged again, ignoring all the penalties. His fist, covered in the golden apparition of an even bigger fist, came straight for her face.