MPCW Ch. 101
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17h
8
Alexei dropped the netherite pickaxe back into his inventory and took a good look at what was left of the vault.
Twenty-one compartments had been cleaned out so thoroughly that even a starving rat would've left disappointed. Only three compartments remained untouched at the far end, as Gu had asked. He had kept his end of the deal, which was already more courtesy than most people would've shown in a room full of money.
He had what he came for. Getting greedy now would just be inviting trouble he didn't need.
He pulled out his crafting table, set it down on the vault floor, then started feeding spirit stones into the interface. The process was plain as dirt. Stone went in, MC spirit stones came out, and the only thing keeping it from being boring was the number climbing in his inventory. After a few minutes, he had 800 high-grade MC spirit stones sitting there.
That was a number a man could admire without shame.
He packed the crafting table away, already counting the trip as worth it. One immortal marrow unit was back in his hands, and with the spirit marrow torch running at the base, the spirit stone circuit could now stretch several kilometers farther.
With that headache handled, he could get back to construction, which was what he'd been trying to focus on for most of the past month.
He headed back through the tunnel, with Liang, Fei, and Gu following behind. Ping trailed at the rear. Judging by his face, something was pissing him off.
They split up at the manor entrance. Alexei stepped onto his sword, rose into the air, and angled upward until the manor rooftops slipped farther and farther below.
The sun was still high, so the day hadn't run out on him yet.
Since he had come all the way into Obsidian Ridge City instead of hovering around the edges for business, he decided he might as well see what kind of place it was. A city this rich had to be hiding something interesting.
---
The beast territories sat too close to the walls, so anything built outside the city was an offering plate. Sooner or later, some pack, herd, or swarm would roll through and tear it apart. Because of that, the city had pulled everyone inside.
Sect compounds and clan estates were packed so tightly together that merchants had to fight for space along the main roads, while craftsmen filled the side streets with smoke, oil, and the stink of hot metal.
From above, the city looked like someone had tried to solve every problem by building higher. Roofs climbed over roofs, narrow bridges linked upper floors, and cultivation towers rose above the mess. Down below, most people probably cared less about whatever grand Dao nonsense was happening overhead than rent, dinner, and not getting trampled by some young master's entourage.
He dropped to street level near the main thoroughfare and followed his nose to a stall with a hot grill and a line of hungry customers. A few copper coins got him a skewer of grilled meat coated in a sweet sauce with a faint medicinal bite. Maybe it had some trace spiritual benefit for cultivators at the right realm. At Foundation Establishment, he probably couldn't draw out much of anything from it, but it tasted good, so he wasn't going to complain.
He walked the streets with food in hand, chewing while he watched the city show its ass.
Sect uniforms were everywhere. By the time he reached the next intersection, he had already counted eight styles, all bright colors and embroidery, each one screaming where the wearer came from and how important they thought they were. Outer disciples straightened their backs when seniors from their own sect passed. Those same seniors flicked their eyes toward rival disciples, then looked away like they hadn't noticed them at all. The elders didn't bother pretending. They cut through the street at their own pace, and everyone else moved because that was how things worked here.
He finished the skewer and started looking for somewhere to toss the stick, only to stop halfway through the motion.
There were waste bins on the street, and somehow, that was the strangest thing he had seen so far. People actually used them, and a team of workers in matching grey uniforms was already moving down the road with a low cart covered in formation lines.
One worker opened the side of a bin and swept the trash into a metal compartment before pressing his palm to the control plate. The cart's formation lit up, compressing the mess into a dense lump as dirty vapor vented through a filtering talisman at the back, stripped of its stink before it reached the street. The useless scraps slid into a second compartment and burned under a faint red glow, while the rest came out as dark little fuel bricks. Even the ash and softened waste dropped neatly into a sealed jar marked for spirit-field fertilizer.
Alexei watched the whole process with more interest than he'd shown most of the sect disciples.
Of all the things Obsidian Ridge City had to brag about, this might've been the first one he respected. Somebody here had looked at piles of garbage and decided cultivators didn't get to pretend their shit vanished just because they wore fancy robes and floated around on swords.
He tossed the skewer stick into the nearest bin, then looked over the street again and decided he was done sightseeing. Obsidian Ridge City was impressive by Eastern Territories standards, but impressive didn't mean fun. Half an hour of watching cultivators puff themselves up over rank had already worn down his patience.
The Nether portal sounded like a better way to waste his time.
----------
[POV: Xu Ran]
The main hall doors had barely shut before Ran reached the head of the table, where he remained standing with his hands behind his back. Sitting made a man look patient, and he had never had much use for patience when there was profit on the floor, so he stayed on his feet and shaped his thoughts into an argument Wen couldn't brush aside without looking like a coward.
"What did you make of the boy?"
Wen stayed at the far end. After decades of keeping the clan fat, he had developed a nose for conversations that came with a price tag.
"I heard he handled the trade well and didn't try to squeeze more out of the deal."
"And the spirit stones?"
"That was the part I didn't like."
At least Wen hadn't gone blind from sitting behind a clan desk all these years.
Ran knew something was wrong the second the boy emptied those twenty-one compartments. It didn't look like an ordinary spatial artifact, and he had seen his share of those things. He had bled for them, and once nearly died for one that turned out to be worth less than the bandit's hand he cut off to get it.
The storage trick was strange, but it wasn't what made his eyes narrow. What caught his attention was what happened whenever the boy swung the pickaxe.
Each strike drove into the spirit stones inside the compartments, forcing them to shrink into tighter, denser chunks, as if several stones had been pressed into one. He didn't know what principle was behind it, and frankly, he didn't give a shit about the scholarly explanation. His eyes had already told him what he needed to know.
The boy was compressing spirit stones through that pickaxe. Then he took out a small wooden platform covered in markings. It could've been a refining tool with a formation array, or some storage gadget. Whatever it was, the compacted stones vanished when they got close. The platform had its uses, but it was only there to collect the results. The real prize was the ability that made those results possible: compressing spirit stones with a swing of a pickaxe.
He had heard of similar abilities before. A useless condition on paper, until the cultivator holding it found the perfect tool. He had once known a man who could send out terrifying cutting slashes with a kitchen knife. Take the knife away, though, and the poor man became so useless that even his killers looked embarrassed.
People joked about him for years afterward, saying the heavens had blessed his cooking and cursed everything else.
Maybe the boy was the same. Ran couldn't tell yet, but he didn't need to understand every detail to know the ability was worth taking.
"The refiner is almost certainly someone with standing in his sect. Fei's description of the circuit work already points there, and a Foundation Establishment brat doesn't walk into this city carrying millions of mid-grade spirit stones unless his sect expects him to make it back. That means a hidden guard or a life-saving method."
"Which makes touching him dangerous."
Wen hated reckless moves, so dressing greed up as confidence would only make him dig in harder.
"His sect might have a Dharma Aspect expert, but they wouldn't send one of their peak figures to babysit a junior in the city. If he has protection, it should be at the Nascent Soul level. One guard, maybe several if the sect truly values him."
Wen folded his hands. "Perhaps."
"Which is why we look before we move. If the guard is too strong, we back off before anything public happens. If the guard is manageable, we invite the boy somewhere quieter."
"And if we're wrong?"
"We lose some time and a few arrangements. Nothing more." Ran spoke calmly, because the answer had already been waiting on his tongue. "But I'm not wrong about the important part. The boy has a divine ability that could be worth more to the clan than the spirit stones he just walked out with, and he can lead us to whoever is producing immortal-grade work in this region."
The opportunity was too good to leave alone once they had a rough idea of what guarded it.
"If we could adapt the compression ability for the clan's storage..."
"We discuss it after the boy is under our roof."
Ran didn't mention that the team was already watching the exits. While the vault exchange was still being wrapped, he had sent men to cover the main roads, side gates, and quieter routes the boy might take. Their first job was to sniff out the protection around him. If a Nascent Soul guardian was close, they would wait. If the brat was moving with only thin shadows at his back, they would act.
"If this turns ugly, it can't lead back to us."
"It won't." Ran's smile was narrow. "And even if his sect suspects something, suspicion isn't proof. A backwater sect won't declare war on the Xu Clan over one disciple."
Wen studied him, then nodded slowly. "Then be careful."
Ran was already heading for the door.
----------
Alexei took roughly twenty minutes to fly from the city center to the outer wall, which told him more about the city's real size than any map could have. Once he crossed the wall, he picked up speed and turned northeast, heading for the Nether portal.
The clear afternoon sky made the flight easier. Bad weather wouldn't stop a sword-riding cultivator, but there was a big difference between gliding through clean air and spending half the trip getting slapped in the face by rain.
Far behind him, twenty-three cultivators adjusted their course to match his while staying outside the reach of his spiritual sense. The second he crossed the wall, their communication talismans flared with gold flame, sending word to the team already waiting ahead.
---
The ambush was clean. Alexei had to give them that much.
He had been flying northeast at a comfortable height, mind half on infrastructure budgets and half on the Nether portal's strange absence from local rumors, when golden chain formations tore out of the ground beneath him.
They hit before his body could catch up with his instincts. One coil locked his arms against his ribs, another pinned the netherite sword in its sheath, then the rest closed over him in a rush of gold light that sent him dropping from the sky like a corpse wrapped for burial.
He slammed into the ground, the impact rattling through the cocoon. For a few seconds, he stayed still and checked what he could. The chains were tight, but they weren't cutting into him, which meant whoever had caught him wanted him alive.
His spiritual energy still moved when he reached for it, though the chains were sucking it away at a steady pace. His sight was gone behind the golden shell, but sound and vibration still made it through, carrying the thuds of several cultivators landing around him.
One of them spoke from outside. "Watch for a Dao protector."
Alexei kept that tucked away. They thought he might have a guardian, which meant they hadn't come in knowing everything.
That left room to make them regret it.
---
The three formation masters felt the drain hit them at the same time.
Spiritual energy poured out of them far faster than the technique had any right to demand. Their eyes met across the formation, and none of them needed to say a word.
The lead elder's grip tightened around the black containment box he had taken from his spatial ring. He looked ready to give the order, but the netherite sword appeared outside the cocoon before he could open his mouth.
It cut down once, splitting through the formation chains.
The cocoon fell straight into the clearing and slammed into the ground. The impact cracked the earth, kicked dust through the trees, and sent the birds shrieking out of the branches before the loose stones around the crater finished rolling away.
By the time the dust thinned, every cultivator there knew the ambush had gone to shit.
Alexei stood in the crater with the netherite sword in his hand, black armor already covering him from head to toe. He had called the set out the instant the chains broke. That was the beauty of keeping gear in an inventory.
Around two dozen cultivators had him surrounded. The three formation masters stood closest, pale from having their technique ripped apart in their hands. The rest had come out of hiding with weapons drawn, spreading through the clearing until every path out had a blade pointed at it. Two elders stayed near the back, far from the crater.
Alexei counted them without letting his eyes settle too long on any one face. Twenty-three, unless someone was waiting outside his range. The weakest ones he could sense were already late Nascent Soul, while four of the elders carried a heavier pressure that put them above the rest, probably half-step Dharma Aspect. That was a lineup people brought when they weren't planning to ask twice.
"Took you a while to set this up," he said, keeping his voice loose. "How long were you people following me?"
The lead elder's gaze moved over Alexei's armor, paused on the netherite sword, then returned to his face.
"Where is your guardian?"
"Don't have one."
The elder didn't believe him, but disbelief only went so far when he couldn't sense anyone nearby. His eyes narrowed before he nodded toward the sword.
"Set the weapon down, and we can speak like civilized people."
Alexei glanced at the ring of cultivators surrounding him, then lowered his eyes to the sword in his hand.
"Funny place to ask for civilized."
"You broke our formation technique. Preparations of that kind take considerable effort."
"You wrapped me in chains before saying hello. That's not negotiation. That's a rude introduction." Alexei adjusted his grip on the sword. "So what do you want?"
"You conducted a significant transaction with the Xu Clan today. The items you sold raised questions about their origin."
"I already told Fei and the others. Someone from my sect handled the refinement."
"We heard what you told them. But we're here for the truth."
Alexei stayed quiet while he worked through the shitshow in front of him. The clearing gave him room to move, but that was about the only favor it did him. Past the trees, he knew nothing. Worse, they had him surrounded from too many angles, which meant even if he broke through one side, someone else would be ready to carve into his back.
The netherite sword could cut through most of them. That should've been comforting, except "most" was a rotten word when the ones left over were the real problem. If he tried to force his way out, the weaker cultivators would slow him down, then the half-step Dharma Aspect cultivators would make him pay for every second he wasted.
So he didn't reach for the sword. If these guys wanted to pretend this was still civilized, he was more than willing to let them keep pretending.
"Suppose I told you that taking me apart out here means losing the only person who knows how to find the refiner. The commissions pass through me. So does the finished work, the payment, and every message either side needs delivered. The refiner doesn't deal with outsiders directly, but I know how to reach them. And you don't. If I die here, congratulations, you've got a corpse in nice armor and no way forward."
The elder's eyes shifted toward one of the other half-step Dharma Aspect cultivators. Alexei had already labeled him the careful one. The man hadn't stopped watching him since the ambush began.
After a few seconds, the lead elder said, "If you are willing to cooperate, then lead us to this refiner."
"I am. But there's a catch. The refiner doesn't stay in the Eastern Territories. They work out of a separate space, and I built a portal nearby that connects to it. It's about two kilometers west of the city. If you want the refiner, that's the entrance."
The careful one spoke, "You expect us to enter a portal of your making, to a destination of your choosing, because you claim it will benefit us."
Alexei looked at him. "Then send one person through with me. I go first, your man follows and checks the other side. If something happens to him, you'll know it's a trap. If he comes back, the rest of you follow."
The elders traded looks. None of them liked it, which was fair. The offer smelled like a trap even when it wasn't one. But it also put the refiner within reach, and greed had dragged smarter men than them into deeper holes.
At last, the lead elder nodded.
"Wutian." He looked toward the careful one. "Go with him."
---
The portal was where Alexei had said it would be, which did more for his credibility than all the talking he had done back in the clearing.
The portal stood between two old trees in a quiet patch of open ground, not far from the city. It was the second one Alexei had built in the area. Wutian didn't stare at it for long. Any cultivator with sense knew better than to study something that folded distance too closely. The more you understood about such things, the less comfortable they became.
Alexei glanced back. "The other side's different. Don't touch anything unless I say it's fine."
Wutian looked from the portal to him. "Understood."
Alexei stepped through first, and Wutian followed.
Purple light closed over them. When it cleared, heat pressed against Wutian's skin, dry air filled his lungs, and a red sky hung over a forest. The trees rose high around them, trunks and leaves dark as old blood, while distant cries slipped through the branches.
Wutian's gaze swept the area. Men who survived as long as he had didn't wait for danger to announce itself before taking inventory.
Beyond the trees, he caught sight of a settlement half-hidden in the crimson woods, with figures moving between the structures.
"The refiner is there?"
"That's where you'd find whoever runs this place."
"I'll bring the others through."
Wutian stepped back into the portal.
---
The group came through over the next two minutes, a few cultivators at a time, until Wutian stepped out last. Most of them stopped as soon as they arrived, caught by the sight of the Nether. Red ground baked under their feet, dry air scraped down their throats, and the whole place had the feeling of a world built inside a furnace for the benefit of idiots.
Alexei waited until the last person was clear of the frame, then reached up and broke one block from the side. The instant it came free, he tucked it into his inventory, and the purple curtain vanished.
That was when the staring stopped.
A blade came halfway out of its scabbard, and that was all the permission the others needed. Spiritual pressure crashed down around Alexei as every cultivator turned on him.
The lead elder's voice went cold. "What did you just do?"
Alexei held up the block. "I turned it off."
"You expect us to accept that?"
"No. But if this was a trap, why would I lock myself in here with your men when they already don't like me?"
That didn't calm them down, but it gave their anger something to chew on before it turned into action.
Wutian stepped closer. "Then give us the part you haven't said."
Alexei glanced at him. "The portal leaks a trace while it's active. If it stays open too long, your city's formation network can pick it up from the Eastern Territory side. Maybe no one cares at first, but curiosity spreads fast. One person checks it, someone else hears about it, and before long we've got a crowd sniffing after us. Once I put the block back and light the portal, it'll open again. Until then, anyone looking from the other side will just see a dead frame. That way, no idiots wander in while we're dealing with the refiner."
One of the cultivators behind the elder narrowed his eyes. "Then hand it over."
Alexei turned to him. "No."
The cultivator's mouth twisted. "You sealed our way back, then expect us to leave the key with you?"
"The way back hasn't gone anywhere, and neither have I. We're stuck in the same mess, so quit acting like I'm about to shove your precious exit into my pocket and run for the hills. What I'm not doing is handing it to some twitchy bastard who might scare himself, relight it too early, and paint half the Eastern Territory a nice bright road straight to us."
The younger cultivator's face twisted, but the lead elder lifted a hand before he could spit out whatever stupid thing was climbing up his throat.
Wutian looked Alexei over, then glanced at the dead frame behind him. His face stayed hard. The old man looked like suspicion had been carved into his bones before he learned how to walk.
"You should have warned us."
Alexei shrugged. "Would you have let me do it?"
"No."
"Then that's why I didn't."
A few cultivators bristled at that. Alexei didn't give a damn.
Wutian's eyes narrowed, but he held his tongue.
Alexei headed for the settlement. "Keep your weapons down until I introduce you. The locals don't like nervous strangers waving steel around."
The lead elder followed, though he kept looking back at the dead portal. "And what are these locals?"
"You'll see."
As they got closer, the figures between the buildings became clearer, and the lead elder's expression changed. The cultivators behind him noticed soon after.
The locals weren't human. They had pig-like faces and thick bodies, and the golden weapons in their hands looked gaudy only until you remembered gold could still split a skull.
Someone behind Alexei muttered, "What are those things?"
"Locals. But they won't bother you as long as..."
The nearest piglin lifted its head and looked them over. Its gaze slid over Alexei first, caught the gold on him, and moved on. To a piglin, that was all the introduction a man needed. When that same gaze reached the cultivators and found no gold at all, a low grunt rumbled out of its throat, and every piglin nearby turned toward the group.
The piglins that had been outside the structures rushed them first, far more of them than the cultivators had noticed from a distance. The ones at the front already had crossbows raised before anyone could pretend this was still a scouting problem.
"Kill them!" the lead elder barked.
His hand rose, and a formation talisman flared before bursting apart. Spiritual pressure crashed into the first row of piglins, knocking several off balance and forcing the rest to stagger as the cultivators advanced behind it.
The group fell into formation at once. For the first stretch of the fight, that discipline made the whole mess look manageable. The piglins hit like carts full of bricks when they got close, but they weren't quick on the turn, and twenty-three cultivators from late Nascent Soul to half-step Dharma Aspect shouldn't have been sweating over a pack of armed pig-beasts.
Then the pack stopped looking like a pack.
More piglins shoved their way out of the buildings, filling the gaps left by the ones already fighting. Others crashed through the tree line on both sides, forcing the cultivators to tighten their formation before it could spread too thin. By the time someone shouted from the rear, another group had already come in from the one direction nobody had bothered to guard.
---
Alexei had pulled back from the main fight and settled behind a thick fungal growth near the treeline. He had caused the mess, but that didn't mean he had to stand in the middle of it.
The cultivators were holding up well. The half-step Dharma Aspect elders knew what they were doing, and Wutian stood out the most. He cut through the piglins so easily that the ones around him looked like drunken thugs swinging at shadows.
The lead elder wasn't wasting time either. Formation talismans burned in his hands one after another, each one turning another patch of battlefield into a killing ground. The piglins kept charging into them anyway, trampling past their own dead like the sight hadn't taught them a thing.
A smarter force would've pulled back before the losses piled up.
These piglins just kept feeding the grinder.
Alexei opened his inventory and found the wither skeleton skulls tucked above the soul sand.
He'd wanted to test a wither against cultivators for a while, but throwing it at ordinary trash wouldn't prove a thing. A wither needed something with weight behind it. Four half-step Dharma Aspect elders at full strength were much better for that.
While the piglins kept the battlefield busy, Alexei slipped out the soul sand and started placing it on the ground. One block followed another until the frame was complete. Then he took out the skulls and set them in place one by one.
The last skull had only just locked into position when Alexei threw an ender pearl toward the treeline. Space yanked him away in the same breath the soul sand frame twisted behind him, and by the time the three skulls rose from it, he was already in another patch of cover.
The air around the forming creature turned thick. The force erupted outward, catching the nearest piglins in the blast and breaking their bodies apart.
The cultivators were farther away, but distance didn't spare them from the pressure that rolled across the battlefield. It hit hard, like a sucker punch from the dark, staggering anyone who had been looking the wrong way.
One of the half-step Dharma Aspect elders turned toward the new threat.
He stared at the triple-skulled monster floating above the remains of the soul sand formation, then said something Alexei couldn't hear from where he stood. Judging from the elder's face, it was probably a word every language invented sooner or later.
The wither screamed, and every cultivator in range flinched as their instincts screamed danger, but the sound hadn't even faded before the creature lunged into its first attack.
---
Alexei drew his trident before the spawn blast had even finished tearing through the treeline. This wither felt different from the others he had killed so far, and the pressure it gave off was also strange.
Even from a hundred meters away, with a wall of fungal growth between them and the detonation, the pressure wave still slammed into the cultivators and knocked them off their feet. Three cultivators were knocked off their feet, while another rolled onto his side, pushed himself halfway up, then stopped cold when he realized his defensive technique had eaten the worst of the hit. His gaze moved toward the smoking crater where the soul sand formation had been, and the look on his face said his brain was still trying to catch up with the mess in front of him.
The wither came out of the ash cloud already whole, its three skulls turning across the battlefield as blue light pulsed around it. The second pulse had barely faded before it started firing.
The skulls weren't as fast as a proper spiritual technique, but that didn't make them slow. They curved outward as they flew, dragging black fire behind them. The lead elder snapped up a formation barrier before the volley reached him, only for the first skull to explode against it and drive a tremor through the barrier. The next blasts hit one after another, each impact shoving more force into the formation.
Alexei picked a target on the outer edge of the formation and threw the trident.
The weapon shot across the field in less than a second, hitting a late Nascent Soul cultivator as he tried to move around the wither's flank. His defensive layer held for only an instant before the trident broke through and drove him into the ground. He tried to get up, but a wound opened across his side and started tearing deeper into him while the weapon pulled itself free and returned to Alexei.
The wither fired another spread of skulls before the others could adjust, sending two cultivators scattering left while the third cut right a little too late. One skull clipped his shoulder, and the withering rot spread through him, making his steps drag and his guard lag behind his reactions.
The lead elder answered with fire, sending a thick column of flame slamming into the wither. The creature didn't even twitch as the flames broke apart across its body and burned out. Before the elder could switch techniques, the wither fired back with a skull burst that smashed into him and drove him six meters across the ground.
His own technique caught him before he lost control completely. He steadied himself and looked at the wither again, but his expression made it clear that whatever plan he'd had before was already useless.
Alexei was already moving along the treeline. He found another gap between the branches, raised the trident, and threw just as a late Nascent Soul cultivator turned to track the wither overhead. The strike caught the man behind the knee and folded his leg under him. Blood followed before he could recover, and by the time the trident returned to Alexei's hand, the cultivator was still stuck on one knee, cursing through clenched teeth while the fight moved on.
The lead elder had his hands full keeping the formation barrier from ripping apart, while two of the half-step Dharma Aspect cultivators poured raw power into anything that looked even vaguely like an opening. Wutian, meanwhile, hadn't wasted a single move trying to compete with them. He moved through the formation, never staying where the beast had last seen him, cutting orders through the noise before bad positions turned into graves.
Wutian kept the cultivators from grouping up for too long. Whenever they started bunching together, he forced them apart before the wither could drop on them, and when someone carrying the wither effect drifted too close to the center, he drove them back toward the edge of the formation.
Once the pressure around him eased, he looked toward the forest and caught sight of Alexei waving at him with a smile.
"Is this civilized enough for you?" Alexei called from the treeline.
Wutian ignored him, but when Alexei pointed upward, his gaze followed. Above the formation, the wither had already finished its first pass and was hanging over the battlefield, all three skulls turning toward the largest knot of cultivators below before it dropped.
It hit the Nether floor skull-first and blew the ground apart. The blast wasn't as wide as the one from its birth, but all that force had been packed into a tighter strike, gouging a crater into the netherrack and spraying red stone shards through robes, skin, and bone. Three cultivators were caught in it. Two dragged themselves out of the wreckage, coughing blood onto the broken stone, while the third didn't move at all.
The others barely had time to register that before the wither shoved itself out of the crater, fragments sliding off its bones as it dropped low and rushed straight at them.
The lead elder dropped the formation barrier and threw himself aside.
The cultivator behind him tried to bring up a sword technique, but the wither reached him before the technique could form. Its body smashed into him head-on, folded his defense before it could harden, then drove him backward into the netherrack. The ground gave way under the force, and the wither kept pushing him down until the cultivator was buried nearly ten meters below the surface.
He hadn't died. A half-step Dharma Aspect cultivator couldn't be killed by one ram. But survival didn't make him useful. The rubble had collapsed over him, the impact had thrown his qi into chaos, and digging his way back up would take time the battlefield had no reason to give him.
The wither ripped itself out of the hole and climbed back into the air just as four skulls shot toward Wutian. He had been reading its rhythm since the fight began, so he slipped through the first wave without much trouble. Then two of the skulls curved off course mid-flight, and although he twisted away from the first, the second clipped his forearm.
The cut was minor, but the wither effect seeped in through the wound and sank past his flesh and qi.
The lead elder exchanged a glance with the remaining half-step Dharma Aspect elders, and neither of them needed to say anything. Their choices were getting uglier by the second.
Fire had already failed. Ice had come next, courtesy of one of the Nascent Soul cultivators, but that hadn't done anything either. Lightning was still possible in theory, but only a fool kept pouring spiritual energy into something that was drinking it down without so much as a twitch. At that point, another ranged attack wouldn't be a strategy.
Blades were the only thing that had gotten a reaction. Two cultivators had managed to push in close with spiritually enhanced swords, and both strikes had made the wither recoil. The problem was getting there. The closer they pressed in, the harder it became to avoid the skulls it spat at them. At that range, they wouldn't get a second chance if one connected.
The two men who had landed hits were paying for it now. Both carried the wither effect, their spiritual energy dragged down by that rot, while one kept a hand pressed to his ribs like something inside him had cracked where it shouldn't have.
A cultivator near the treeline had been edging through the chaos, probably trying to reach Alexei. He almost made it, too, but before he could take the last few steps, a trident tore through his upper arm and left a wound that wouldn't stop bleeding.
The man dropped to the ground, his courage draining out of him along with the blood.
A heartbeat later, the trident snapped back into Alexei's hand.
The lead elder made his choice and reached into his spatial ring.
What he pulled out weren't the cheap talismans cultivators slapped onto a fight when they wanted a quick burst of fire or a little extra defense. These were the last-resort ones.
He gave the others a curt order, and the formation shifted around him. The cultivators spread out from the wither, giving him room to work while he sent talismans into the air above the wither one after another. The others caught on fast and added their own. Each talisman locked into the growing pattern, feeding more spiritual energy into it until the pressure thickened so hard Alexei could feel it from his position.
The explosion opened above the wither and tore through the forest in a wave, rattling bone and flattening the air as a white glare swallowed the battlefield. The nearest crimson tree took the blast head-on, its bark peeling from one side of the trunk before smoke rolled in and buried the clearing.
For several seconds, no one outside the radius could see what had happened. The Nether's heavy air pulled at the smoke in slow streams, and when the clearing came back into view, the wither was still there.
It hovered in place, slowly rotating as it corrected its position.
Two cultivators caught at the edge of the blast were already down. A third was still standing, though only because he hadn't yet understood how badly he had been hit. One of his arms was gone. The lead elder remained upright, but his face had turned pale after burning through so much of the formation's reserve, while the half-step Dharma Aspect elder who had tried using fire earlier now had a long burn across his jaw, with blood trailing down to his collar.
"That didn't do anything to this creature? How are we supposed to..."
The speaker never finished.
The wither shot forward, and the cultivator didn't even realize he had been chosen before several black skulls struck him at close range. His defenses shattered under the impact, and what was left of him hit the ground in pieces.
The wither didn't stop there. It drifted over the ruined body, its three heads turning until each one faced a different part of the formation line.
No one moved.
The surviving cultivators stared back at it. None of them called what they felt despair, because they were cultivators, and cultivators didn't give fear such an honest name. But every face in the formation line showed the same answer