[POV: Radiant Peak Sect]
Three days had passed since the Radiant Peak Sect had been trapped in what they still believed was an "ancient battlefield."
The obsidian doorframe where the portal had once stood now lay empty. Formation arrays, spiritual energy infusions, even brute force attempts to break the frame itself had all failed.
They were truly trapped.
The heat was the worst part. It drained their spiritual energy constantly. And unlike the outside world, there was no ambient qi here to replenish what they lost.
It was only a matter of time before their reserves ran dry completely.
When that happened, even Core Formation cultivators wouldn't last long. Their bodies would dry out, reduced to shriveled husks under the merciless heat.
The middle-aged leader, Han Bizong, stood near the dead portal and tried to maintain a calm expression. His injured arm had been treated with healing pills, but the damage from that trident throw was deeper than simple flesh wounds. The meridians in his shoulder were permanently damaged.
He would never regain full function of that arm.
Behind him, the remaining thirty-four sect members huddled in groups.
They had lost three people in the first few hours.
The creatures here had seemed harmless at first. Their fireballs were slow, easily deflected with sword qi. The cultivators had even started using them for target practice, batting the projectiles back toward the creatures.
Then one of the reflected fireballs had hit the ground near a group of three disciples.
The explosion had been unexpected.
"Yiya~~~"
A ghast drifted closer and opened its mouth.
A fireball emerged, trailing flames as it flew toward the group.
Most of the cultivators barely reacted. They had seen dozens of these attacks by now. A few of them shifted slightly to the side as the fireball passed.
BOOM.
The sound wasn't particularly loud. About as loud as a hand clap, maybe slightly more.
But the three Core Formation cultivators within five meters of the impact point didn't even have time to scream.
Their bodies disintegrated instantly. The heat followed immediately after, so intense that it vaporized what little remained before it could hit the ground.
The cultivators who had been standing nearby stood frozen.
"What..." someone whispered. "How..."
Bizong's face went pale.
If Alexei saw this scene, he would probably be just as confused.
But once you understood that a reflected ghast fireball dealt roughly 1000 damage to the ghast itself in Minecraft terms, the math became clear. Without the limits of game mechanics, that translated into an explosive force equal to about one-fifth of a TNT block. In real-world terms, that was roughly 180 kilograms of TNT. The blast would have a kill radius of at least 90 meters, with severe injuries extending out to 230 meters, and the shockwave alone capable of harming people as far as 600 meters away.
Core Formation cultivators were far from ordinary humans. But at point-blank range, against that kind of explosive force?
Instant vaporization was the only outcome.
Bizong looked at the remaining thirty-one sect members.
They were all going to die here.
----------
[POV: Alexei]
Three days had passed since Alexei had trapped the Radiant Peak Sect in the Nether, and he had to admit: being left alone to explore was nice.
Sure, he had been targeted by a few more groups of cultivators in the meantime. But none of them had been particularly organized, and most had been solo attempts or pairs.
Against one or two attackers, his boat-suction technique worked.
His level had climbed to 147 thanks to the generous experience donations from people who really should have known better than to attack a stranger in a mystic realm.
But there was one thing he had learned from all the killing and looting:
Cultivators in this world were poor.
The grand total of wealth he had collected from nearly a dozen would-be robbers was less than ten low-grade spirit stones.
Their belongings were disappointing. They only had a few low-quality healing pills, some damaged talismans, and at most a low-grade weapon or two. None of it was worth keeping.
The only valuable thing about them had been their experience points.
He flew another hundred-or-so kilometers east, following the steady stream of cultivators heading toward the core region, until he spotted a large clearing below.
Rocky ground stretched out in a natural plaza formation, with dozens of small spirit boats parked haphazardly across the space. Cultivators moved between them, trading goods, forming parties, or just resting before heading deeper.
He pulled out his map and cross-referenced the location.
[Core Entrance - Verdant Vine Mystic Realm]
"Well, at least the map is readable for once."
He put away his equipment, storing everything in his inventory. If this place was as crowded as it looked, openly carrying weapons would just invite more trouble.
Besides, cultivator gathering spots usually had some kind of informal truce. Nobody wanted to start a fight when there were dozens of witnesses around.
He descended on the Pale Sky Blade, trying to land smoothly.
The wind from his approach still sent up a small cloud of dust and made a few people stumble.
A young cultivator who had been negotiating with a merchant was caught off guard by the gust and nearly lost his balance. He turned, clearly ready to curse whoever had been rude enough to interrupt him.
The words died in his throat when he saw Alexei.
"Uh." The man cleared his throat. "Sorry. I thought someone had... never mind."
Alexei raised an eyebrow. "Thought someone had what?"
"Nothing. Just... you know. Spirit boat landings can be rough. Forget I said anything."
The cultivator quickly turned back to his merchant and resumed negotiations.
Alexei shrugged and started walking.
That was weird, but whatever. He had more important things to worry about.
The plaza was less crowded than the entrance outside the realm, but the atmosphere was different here. Everyone present was a cultivator, and most of them were at Foundation Establishment or higher. The spiritual pressure in the air was noticeable. The constant buzz of ambient qi made his skin prickle slightly.
He wandered through the marketplace, listening to conversations and picking up bits of information.
Most of the chatter revolved around pill spirit essences, how much they were worth, who had found them, and which sects had been getting lucky.
"...can you believe it? Eternal Autumn Sect found two essences in a single day!"
"I heard they have over a dozen by now. That is seventy or eighty thousand spirit stones just sitting in their treasury."
"Meanwhile, Oceanic Soul Sect sent seventy Core Formation disciples and has not found a single one in months. Can you imagine?"
"Serves them right for being greedy. You can't just throw numbers at a problem and expect results."
Alexei slowed his pace.
If he could get his hands on a few pill spirit essences...
That was when he heard a commotion near the center of the plaza.
A crowd had gathered.
He made his way over, slipping through gaps in the crowd until he had a decent view of what was happening.
In the middle of the circle stood a group of seven or eight cultivators wearing matching sect robes. Their expressions were uniformly miserable.
"Who are they?" he asked the person next to him.
The cultivator gave him a brief glance. "They're from the Oceanic Soul Sect. The unlucky bastards everyone's been talking about."
Alexei studied the Oceanic Soul disciples more closely. They looked exhausted and deeply sunburned.
He almost felt bad for them.
"Rough luck."
"Luck has nothing to do with it," someone else chimed in. "They are just incompetent. Probably spent all their time fighting over territory instead of searching."
The crowd started to disperse as the spectacle lost its appeal. The Oceanic Soul disciples slunk away, tired of being the center of attention.
Alexei was about to leave as well when a familiar voice spoke behind him.
"Well, this is unexpected."
He turned.
Che stood there, hands clasped behind his back, wearing the same friendly expression as before.
"You made it to the core entrance. I wasn't sure you would. The journey here can be dangerous for solo cultivators."
"I managed."
"Clearly." Che's eyes flickered briefly to Alexei's robes. "Though I notice you are traveling even lighter than before. Did you stash your stuffs somewhere safe?"
"Something like that."
Che smiled. "The closer you get to the core, the more aggressive people become. Best not to advertise what you have."
"Is that why you are here? Heading into the core?"
"Eventually. I have been gathering information first. The core regions are no joke, especially for independent cultivators. Going in blind is suicide."
That was probably true. Alexei had been planning to do exactly that, but hearing it phrased so bluntly made him reconsider.
"Any advice?"
Che looked pleased by the question. "Plenty. But not for free." He gestured toward a quieter section of the plaza. "Buy me a drink, and we can talk properly."
Alexei hesitated.
Che was obviously after something. The man practically had ulterior motives written all over him.
Still, information was valuable. He was heading into the core region either way, with or without good intel. He might as well pick up a few useful tips.
"One drink. And if you try to sell me a treasure map or recruitment pitch, I am walking away."
Che laughed. "Fair enough."
They found a small stall selling tea and sat down at a rough wooden table.
"So," Che said, pouring himself a cup. "What do you know about pill spirit?"
"They are mobile spiritual plants that formed consciousness. They guard valuable herbs, fight each other, and sometimes produce essences when killed."
"That's correct. But do you know why killing them produces essences?"
Alexei shook his head.
"Because they consume the spiritual plants in their territory," Che explained. "They eat them, refine them internally using a crude alchemical process, and store the resulting energy in a concentrated form. When you kill a pill spirit, that stored energy sometimes crystallizes into a physical object, the essence."
"And those essences are valuable because they can be purified into actual pills."
"Yes. Though purifying them requires either a Nascent Soul cultivator or a skilled medical cultivator. For most people, the essences are too unstable to consume safely."
Alexei already knew all this, but he let Che continue.
"The problem is that pill spirits are territorial. They claim areas with high concentrations of spiritual plants and defend them aggressively. If you stumble into one's territory without preparation, you will die."
"How do you know if you are in a pill spirit's territory?"
"The vegetation changes. You will see clusters of rare herbs growing in unnatural patterns, usually arranged in a rough circle around a central point. That central point is where the pill spirit lives."
"And if I see that pattern, I should turn around and leave."
"Unless you are confident in your combat abilities." Che sipped his tea. "Which, no offense, you don't strike me as a close-combat specialist."
They sat in silence for a moment.
"There is one more thing you should know. Not all pill spirits are equal. The stronger ones are intelligent. They can set traps, use tactics, and even mimic human speech in some cases."
That was new information.
"How do you tell the difference between a weak pill spirit and a strong one?"
"Size, usually. The bigger they are, the more they have consumed. If you see a pill spirit larger than a human, run."
Alexei filed that away. "Anything else?"
"Just one thing." Che's expression turned more serious. "If you find a high-grade essence don't sell it cheaply. Those are worth hundreds of thousands of spirit stones to the right buyer. Don't let some merchant cheat you."
"I will keep that in mind."
They finished their tea in silence.
When Alexei stood to leave, Che remained seated.
"Good luck in there," the man said. "And if you survive, maybe we will run into each other again."
"Maybe."
Alexei left the stall and made his way toward the center of the plaza, where a massive crack in the ground served as the entrance to the core region.
The fissure was easily twenty meters wide, with sheer rock walls that plunged straight down into darkness. A steady stream of cultivators descended into it, some flying on swords, others using movement techniques to run along the walls.
He peered over the edge.
But he couldn't see the bottom.
A powerful updraft surged from below. He could feel it pushing against him even standing several meters back from the edge.
He watched a few cultivators drop into the fissure. Most of them slowed their descent using flying artifacts or movement techniques. One particularly reckless individual just jumped and let the updraft catch them.
Alexei stepped to the edge, took a breath, and jumped.
The updraft hit him at once, nearly halting his fall. He hung in midair for a moment, the wind tossing him around.
Then he equipped his full set of diamond armor. The added weight immediately overcame the updraft, and he started descending again.
Behind him, a cultivator who had been about to offer help, thinking Alexei was an inexperienced junior who had jumped by mistake, watched in confusion as the young man plummeted past.
Then the Pale Sky Blade appeared beneath Alexei's feet, and he shot downward at full speed.
CRACK.
The cultivator blinked.
Had that guy just... smashed his head into a protruding rock?
He looked at the fresh head-shaped crater in the stone wall and felt his own head ache in sympathy.
Alexei, meanwhile, was too busy accelerating to care about minor head injuries.
The fissure was not a straight drop. It twisted and turned, with narrow sections, sharp corners, and random outcroppings of stone that seemed designed specifically to be obstacles.
"Blyat!"
WHAM.
He slammed shoulder-first into a wall, ricocheted off, and barely managed to correct his flight path before hitting another one.
"Who designed this thing?" he shouted into the rushing wind. "This is a death trap!"
The problem was speed. He was moving too fast to react properly to the turns. Then again, if his qi control were better, speed wouldn't have been an issue. That meant qi control was his real problem.
Slowing down wasn't an option. Other cultivators would catch up, and he really didn't feel like dealing with people right now.
So he kept his speed up and just tanked the impacts.
CRASH!
Another rock caught him in the face.
"FUCK!"
He spat out stone fragments and adjusted his trajectory.
The fissure continued downward for what felt like forever. According to his mental measurements, he had already descended more than twenty-five kilometers, and there was still no sign of the bottom.
Behind him, the cultivators who had watched him jump were now following at a more reasonable pace.
They kept passing fresh impact craters in the walls, some shaped like heads, others like full bodies, all of them deep enough to be concerning.
"Is that guy still alive?" one of them asked.
"He has to be. Otherwise, we would have seen the body."
"Maybe he is a body cultivator? That would explain why he can survive those impacts."
"At that speed? No body cultivation technique is that good."
They flew past another crater, this one with visible cracks spreading out from the impact point.
"...Whose disciple is this?" someone finally asked. "They clearly have no idea how to fly properly."
"Probably some young master who got a flying sword from their family and never learned how to use it."
"Poor bastard is going to get himself killed."
Far below them, Alexei finally saw the bottom of the fissure.
Light filtered in from somewhere ahead, and the darkness gave way to a hazy glow.
He reduced his speed slightly and touched down on solid ground.
His armor had taken most of the damage from the repeated collisions, but he still felt sore in about fifteen different places.
"That," he said, brushing rock dust off his robes, "was the worst flying experience of my life. And I have flown through the Nether."
He looked up at the fissure he had just descended and shook his head.
"When I leave, I am taking the long way."
He stepped out of the dust cloud from his landing and looked around.
The space was massive. Open caverns stretched in every direction. Their walls were covered in thick moss and clusters of bioluminescent plants that cast a soft glow. Despite being deep underground, it was far from dark.
The fissure he had descended through was shaped like a triangle, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. At the entrance above, it had been maybe thirty meters across. From down here, he could no longer see the edges at all.
That was fine with him. More space meant less chance of running into other cultivators.
He pulled out the map and flipped it over.
The back showed a partial layout of the explored areas in the core region.
"So... where exactly am I?"
The mapped portions of the underground palace covered thousands of kilometers, divided into countless irregular chambers and passages. But the map's main purpose wasn't to help people find treasures. It was to tell them: This area has already been looted. Go somewhere else.
Of course, even though previous cultivators had cleared these zones decades ago, new pill spirits had formed since the realm reopened...
From what he could tell, he was currently in the outer region, close to the middle areas.
According to the brief history he had read, this fissure wasn't the original entrance to the underground palace. It had split open about three hundred years ago for unknown reasons, revealing the vast subterranean complex beneath. Before that, cultivators had just treated this place as a cultivation paradise with dense spiritual energy.
"Whatever. Time to loot."
The glowing plants around him would be perfect for his survival base. Free lighting without torches? Hell yes.
He walked over to one of the luminescent flowers and examined it.
[Moongleam Flower]
He opened his crafting interface to check.
[Fluorescent Dye ×1]
His eyes lit up. "Oh, this is good."
If he could farm these, he could dye sheep and have permanent glowing livestock. The thought of a flock of neon-colored sheep wandering around his base was oddly appealing.
He checked several other glowing plants. They came in different species and shapes, but all of them produced the same result: fluorescent dye.
After collecting seeds from every variety he could find, he spotted a cave entrance about seven or eight meters high and flew toward it.
The underground palace turned out to be a maze.
He spent hours flying through interconnected chambers, following passages that branched, twisted, and looped back on themselves. A compass would have been useless. Half the tunnels curved in impossible directions, and even his sense of magnetic north kept shifting.
Digging through the walls wasn't an option. At his current mining speed, about one block per second, carving a straight path through thousands of kilometers of stone would take… no, he wasn't doing that math. It would take forever.
So he kept flying at random, hoping to stumble across something useful.
By the third day, he was starting to question his life choices.
He sat on top of a large boulder, staring out at the cavern, and felt a flicker of frustration. He was almost certain he had seen this exact rock formation half a day ago.
"I'm going in circles?"
Secret realms in novels were supposed to be dangerous, filled with traps, monsters, and death at every turn.
This one was... peaceful, which honestly made it even weirder.
"This is bullshit."
WHOOSH.
A cultivator shot past overhead, flying on a sword at full speed. The wind from their passage kicked up dust and loose gravel.
Then several more figures followed. They disappeared beyond the edge of his vision in seconds.
CRASH!
A young man in red robes plummeted from the air and slammed into the ground about ten meters away, the impact cracking the stone beneath him.
"Guh..." The cultivator coughed, blood spraying from his mouth. He tried to push himself up, failed, and collapsed back onto the ground.
Alexei watched from his boulder.
The injured man turned his head, saw Alexei sitting there, and his eyes went wide. For a moment, he just stared. Then his expression shifted.
"Run!" he gasped. "There's a Nascent Soul pill spirit... it's coming..."
BOOM!
A section of wall two or three hundred meters away exploded outward, sending massive chunks of stone flying in every direction.
What emerged was easily ten meters tall. Its body resembled polished jade. Green flames burned along its head and back. Its limbs were thick, ending in massive hands that looked capable of crushing a person without effort.
Despite its size, it moved with startling speed. One hand lashed out and swatted two fleeing cultivators from the air, sending them flying like ragdolls. They slammed into the far wall.
Several others were still trying to fight it. Their swords flashed as they darted around the creature. It made no difference. Their attacks seemed to do nothing, while each swipe from the pill spirit sent them tumbling.
Alexei stared. "...Huh. So that's what a pill spirit looks like."
He had always assumed they would be human-sized. This thing was more like "small building-sized."
The injured cultivator on the ground was staring at him. "What are you doing?! Run! They cannot hold it much longer!"
The man's voice was hoarse. He clearly thought he was going to die here. And based on the blood pooling beneath him, he probably wasn't wrong.
But even knowing his own death was imminent, he couldn't stop trying to warn a stranger to flee.
Alexei found that surprisingly decent. Most cultivators he had met so far would have left him to die without a second thought.
"Alright," he said, standing up. "I'll help."
The injured man blinked. "What?"
Alexei pulled the trident from his inventory and held it in his right hand. In his left, he grabbed a water bucket.
The cultivator stared at the bucket, clearly confused. "What are you..."
Alexei jumped off the boulder.
The impact when he landed shook the entire cavern. The injured man felt himself lift slightly off the ground from the shockwave, and his eyes went wide.
What kind of body cultivation technique produces that much force?!
SPLASH!
Alexei dumped the water bucket. A perfect cube of water spread out in all directions, forming a shallow pool around him.
The injured cultivator's brain struggled to process what he was seeing.
Square water?
The water was square...
DING.
The trident in the stranger's hand began to glow. Faint golden light wrapped around the weapon, pulsing with each chime.
DING.
The light intensified, spreading from the trident to the ground and casting everything in a warm, earthy golden radiance.
DING.
On the third chime, the entire weapon blazed so brightly it hurt to look at.
The stranger threw the trident.
It shot forward, crossing two hundred meters in half a second.
The cultivators fighting the pill spirit heard something tear through the air behind them and turned on instinct.
A streak of light rushed toward them. By their standards, it was slow, moving at only two hundred meters per second.
Their sword qi could reach several thousand meters per second. At that level, hitting another cultivator usually required overwhelming numbers or precise timing. A weapon this slow shouldn't have posed any threat, not to someone at Foundation Establishment, let alone Core Formation.
"What is..." one of them started to say.
SLAM!
The pill spirit's hand caught him across the chest, sending him crashing into the ground with enough force to embed him half a meter deep.
The others snapped their attention back to the fight.
The trident closed in on the pill spirit. The creature glanced at it raised a hand to knock it aside.
BOOM!
A shockwave erupted from the point of collision, blasting outward in a ring of compressed air that scattered dust and loose stones across the entire cavern. The pill spirit's hand deformed under the force and the creature itself was thrown backward.
It crashed into the wall, cracking the stone as green flames surged around it.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then the remaining cultivators exchanged glances and came to the same conclusion without a word.
Run.
Spiritual energy flooded their meridians as they pushed their movement techniques to the limit. In less than a second, they had shot past Alexei and were already disappearing into the far passages.
One of them called back over his shoulder, "We won't compete for this pill spirit! Good luck, fellow cultivator!"
The words echoed through the cavern as they fled.
"...Good luck..."
"...luck..."
The injured man on the ground could only stare.
Alexei glanced at the man.
"Can you move?"
"I... what... who..."
"Can you move?" Alexei repeated. "Because that thing is going to get back up, and I would rather not fight it with you lying there."
The cultivator tried to stand, winced, and fell back. "No. I cannot move properly yet."
"Figures." Alexei pulled a healing pill from his inventory and tossed it over. "Take that. And get behind cover."
The man caught the pill, stared at it for a moment, then swallowed it without hesitation. His wounds began closing almost immediately, spiritual energy flooding his damaged meridians and knitting them back together.
"Thank you," he managed. "I am Liang Feng. I owe you—"
"You don't owe me anything. Just stay out of the way."
Feng scrambled toward a massive boulder and ducked behind it, still clutching his ribs.
The pill spirit tore itself free from the wall, green flames roaring back to full intensity. Cracks spread across its body, already beginning to seal as its regeneration kicked in.
Then it charged.
The distance vanished in less than a second. A fist larger than Alexei's torso was suddenly inches from his face.
Feng, crouched behind the boulder, shut his eyes. "It's over."
A full-force strike from a Nascent Soul pill spirit could shatter protective artifacts, break defensive formations, and crush bone. Against someone at Body Tempering or early Qi Refining, there wouldn't even be enough left to bury.
CLANG!
Feng's eyes snapped open.
Alexei had raised his shield at the last possible instant. The pill spirit's fist hit the flat surface and bounced.
The water around Alexei's feet didn't even ripple. The stone beneath him remained perfectly intact. He had not moved a single step backward.
MC water cushioning at its finest.
The shockwave from the deflected blow, however, was a different story. It blasted outward in a concussive ring that caught Feng even behind his cover, lifting him off the ground and sending him tumbling another ten meters across the cavern floor.
"Gah... what..."
The pill spirit's arm was covered in dense cracks. Green flames leaked from the fractures, and the creature's regeneration immediately went to work sealing the damage.
Alexei lowered his shield slightly, inspecting it for damage. The shield was fine.
The Shield Counter V enchantment was working exactly as advertised: any attack blocked within 0.25 seconds of raising the shield reflected 20% damage per level. At level five, that was a full 100% damage reflection.
In this world, 0.25 seconds was an eternity for high-level cultivators. Core Formation cultivators could exchange dozens of blows in that time.
The pill spirit staggered backward several steps, flames flaring as it tried to stabilize. Behind it, the trident shot through the air, returning to Alexei's hand.
The creature twisted, narrowly avoiding the weapon as it streaked past.
Feng was still sprawled on the ground where the shockwave had thrown him, staring in disbelief.
"Shit!" The curse slipped out before he could stop it. It was the first time he had sworn in over a decade.
That young man had just blocked a full-power strike from a Nascent Soul pill spirit with a shield and hadn't even taken a single step back.
If anything, the pill spirit had been the one forced to retreat.
"What kind of shield is that?" he whispered.
---
Alexei and the pill spirit fell into a brief standoff.
The creature wasn't stupid. It had already learned from the reflected damage that charging in blindly was a bad idea, so it began to circle him instead.
Alexei had no intention of rushing in either. His armor carried Thorns enchantments, but the reflected damage was limited, only a few thousand kilograms of force at best. That might injure a spiritual cultivator below Nascent Soul who didn't specialize in body cultivation or defense, but it wouldn't be enough to bring down something like this.
Trying to fight it head-on would be suicide. The pill spirit was faster, stronger, and constantly regenerating.
No, the smarter approach was to bait it into attacking, use Shield Counter to disrupt its momentum, and then follow up with a fully charged trident throw at close range.
The problem was getting it to commit.
They circled each other for several seconds, neither willing to make the first move.
"Screw it," Alexei muttered.
He aimed at the pill spirit's torso and threw the trident.
The creature sidestepped easily, green flames suddenly igniting along both its arms. The fire looked real, but it gave off no heat, almost as if it didn't exist at all.
Alexei treated it exactly like that.
He was standing in MC water. Fire didn't work.
The pill spirit saw its chance and lunged with its arms wrapped in green flame.
Alexei's hand, which had been gripping the trident a moment ago, now held a palm-sized wooden boat.
"Here you go."
The moment the boat left his hand, it materialized directly beneath the pill spirit's descending body.
The creature had no time to react. It was caught midair and forced into a tiny wooden boat.
But momentum was still a thing.
The punch was already in motion, and it slammed into Alexei before he could raise his shield.
WHAM!
His health bar dropped by half a heart, and his body slid back half a step from the impact. Then it immediately refilled.
With full diamond armor and knockback resistance, the pill spirit might as well have been punching a mountain.
BANG BANG BANG!
The creature realized it was trapped and went berserk. It slammed into the ground, thrashed its limbs, and twisted its body in a desperate attempt to break free.
But nothing worked. The boat's binding effect was absolute. As long as it remained in place, the pill spirit was locked down, unable to move even a centimeter.
From behind his boulder, Feng felt his thoughts stall.
He had taken a direct hit from that thing earlier. It had shattered two of his protective artifacts and nearly killed him, even with three defensive talismans layered on top of each other.
This young man had taken the same attack and walked away with barely a scratch.
"Who is he?" he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
Alexei stepped back, putting some distance between himself and the immobilized pill spirit.
The creature, unable to reach him, shifted tactics. It raised one hand and hurled a ball of green flame directly at him.
There was no dodging it. The fireball was too fast.
Alexei didn't bother trying.
With his current physical stats, resistance, and the fact that he was still standing in MC water, regular fire barely bothered him.
The flames washed over him without effect.
He scooped up the water with an empty bucket, mounted the Pale Sky Blade, and flew about fifty meters away before placing the water down again. It spilled from above, cascading down and extinguishing the flames below.
Then he pulled out his bow.
The pill spirit, still trapped in the boat, locked onto him and snarled. The green flames around its body flared, but it couldn't move. It could not dodge. It could do nothing except endure whatever came next.
Alexei drew the bowstring.
He rarely used a bow. It had the Critical Hit enchantment stacked three times, with a theoretical maximum of sixty damage, but in practice, hitting a moving target was almost impossible.
Arrows were fast, but cultivators at the Foundation Establishment stage and above could dodge them easily. The only way to land a hit was if the target stayed still or walked straight into it.
Right now, the pill spirit was doing exactly that.
He aimed at its torso and released.
WHOOSH.
THUNK.
The arrow tore through the air.
The pill spirit raised a hand to knock it aside, but the arrow tore straight through its palm without slowing, driving deep into its chest.
Flames erupted across its body in an instant. Orange fire came first, but it didn't stop there. Other colors followed, each carrying a different effect as they layered over one another. The creature's aura twisted under the assault. Its strength began to drain, and its movements gradually slowed.
Thick spirals of multicolored smoke poured from its body as the effects continued to build.
Feng, along with several other injured cultivators who had only just pulled themselves free from the walls they had been embedded in, could only stare in silence.
"That's…" one of them said. "Pill spirits are made of pill essence and spiritual fire. To ignite one, you would need flames of a higher grade than the fire that forms it..."
The pill spirit was already screaming, thrashing inside its boat-shaped prison as the flames consumed it.
Alexei raised his trident.
DING.
The weapon began to glow, faint light wrapping around the three prongs.
DING.
The light intensified, spreading down the shaft.
DING.
On the third chime, the entire trident blazed with Earth qi.
Even through its pain, the pill spirit sensed the danger and raised both hands to block.
It didn't matter.
Weakened, slowed, and burning from within, its body weighed down by more than a dozen negative effects, it couldn't gather the strength to stop the attack.
The fully charged trident slammed into its head.
BOOM!
Its skull warped on impact, cracks spreading across its body. The creature toppled backward, still trapped in the boat, but now horizontal as its body hit the ground.
Experience orbs burst from its body in a glittering cloud and scattered across the stone floor.
The green flames didn't fade. If anything, they burned hotter, consuming it from the inside. Within seconds, half of its torso turned to ash.
Alexei caught the returning trident and stared at the dying creature.
"That's it?"
He had expected more. Something on the level of a Guardian, or at least a second phase. Instead, it went down like a regular mob.
"Anticlimactic," he muttered, already losing interest.