There they stood, two people from a different world that now came together on the battlefield. Zhang Dong was on one side wearing a somewhat uncharacteristic white and golden armor. It made him look like a certain metallic superhero from a comic book that he used to read when he was younger.

On the other side, there was Wang Long, a person that he just met. Both of them might have come from the same world and might have even had similar backgrounds. While one chose to succumb to the carnal pleasures of this world where power was paramount, the other managed to retain some of his core values.

“Were you one of those cringe weebs or something?”

“I guess talking sense into you will be impossible…”

Zhang Dong raised his sword up over his head and was ready to deliver a strike.

“Do you think you can win against me? With such a low cultivation level? You really didn’t use your time well to grind for points.”

Wang Long laughed while waving his own sword around. From his perspective, he had a clear advantage. Zhang Dong could also see that his opponent was at the nascent soul stage and in the middle realm of it.

The time he was gone has given the man time to catch up but from Zhang Dong’s perspective, his level was somewhat low. He was a member of a prestigious clan but he only managed to get to the same point that he did before he was ejected from this world.

This person’s progress was somewhat slow but there were a few explanations. When he was looking at how he behaved it was somewhat clear to him why.

“Low cultivation huh?”

He replied while also quickly swinging his sword downward. Wang Long just snorted and released a blast from his own sword which turned purple. The two surges of energies collided with each other and canceled themselves out.

There was a clear surprise on Wang Long’s face as he probably expected to overpower Zhang Dong’s strike with pure cultivation power. But this moment of confusion would not be wasted by his enemy.

Zhang Dong’s body faded away as the area that he was previously in had only an after image left behind. Wang Long’s reaction was somewhat slow as a protective barrier around his body appeared and he finally turned to the side. There he saw a blade being pressed against this barrier that was protecting him.

“You little shit!”

He swung back but his opponent quickly dodged in a strange fashion. His heightened senses pointed him to where he vanished to but when he swung his blade towards that spot it was as if Zhang Dong knew that the attack was going and was able to parry.

The two fighters started clashing through the sky and one of them was obviously coming out on top. Soon the exchange ended and Wang Long’s face started contorting into an ugly frown.

“How the hell… it’s that armor isn’t it?”

Zhang Dong didn’t reply as he was done with the talking. The diplomatic approach had been refused by Wang Long so he would not give him an opportunity to back out now.

‘This guy clearly doesn’t know how to fight.’

After the couple exchanges, Zhang Dong came to this conclusion. Wang Long’s cultivation was high and if he tried to pit power against power, Zhang Dong would be on the losing end. This he was able to counter with his superior battle scene which he gained through experience.

It was clear that Wang Long was a protected young master. While he might have had to prove himself somewhat at the lower realms, it was clear that he had not advanced past a certain threshold.

Battling at the foundation establishment and core formation level was quite different from the nascent soul level. The enhanced spiritual sense that a nascent soul master had could be used in certain ways to read your opponent's movements.

The two masters would pit it against each other to affect the flow battle. For some reason, this Wang Long was not very good at doing this so he could read him like an open book. After progressing to this level it was obvious that he didn’t study the techniques that were available to him.

With his status of Soaring Dragon Sect's future Patriarch, he had a big shield around him. No one in their right mind would try to offend him or ask him for a sparring match. Thus Zhang Dong believed that his opponent didn’t actually know how to fully use his current abilities.

The system was also probably responsible. He remembered the days when he was also dependent on it. Instead of learning the techniques himself he spent his days using points on skills that sounded cool and had a good rating.

Some points were used on abilities that were not even that good or somewhat similar to others that he already had. After the system store went away he was forced to actually train his skills up but then he finally noticed that being proficient in his skills was actually better.

It was much better to train in a certain sword art that he could also later upgrade with his system than to buy a new sword skill from the store. This was probably what this man he was facing doing. When he was done with the lower level skill he just replaced it with a new version that might not particularly go well with his own fighting style.

‘It would be nice if that was the case but I’m not doing much to him either way…’

While he didn’t find it hard to land a few hits here and there, he wasn’t able to do any damage. Any time he went in for the kill a protective barrier surrounded Wang Long’s whole body. It was as if he had an intelligent defensive formation on his body that sprung up every time he was in danger.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, this fight has almost started, let me show you the difference in levels!”

Wang Long called out while being surrounded by a haze of purple energy that also was lightning-based. Zhang Dong backed away as he was unsure of what was coming but soon he realized that his opponent was bringing out one of his trump cards, his soul beast.

“Wait… isn’t that…”

He was a bit surprised by the appearance of this soul beast that Wang Long summoned. The purple energy that he was covered with and the lightning strikes also felt familiar. The moment the soul beast was revealed it all made sense.

“A black lightning dragon?”

There it was before him, it was not quite as big as his own soul beast golden dragon but it wasn’t far behind. During the exchanges that he had with the man, he also noticed the peculiar element that he was using was very similar to his own.

It looked like both of them went with the lightning element when it came to making their character. The only difference was that Wang Long went with the purple lightning that offered more attacking power while he went with the golden variant that was more universal and added healing.

“That armor might be making you stronger but without a soul beast you are just like a trash mob!”

Wang Long laughed while pointing with his finger, this caused the large black dragon to howl in anger and discharge purple lightning bolts towards Zhang Dong. His body was submerged in this strange purple lightning energy as he was not able to dodge.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, now give me all of your spirit points!”

The laughs continued for a while but soon Wang Long noticed that something was off. His enemy was being surrounded by electrical energy but he was not screaming. It was as if the attack wasn’t affecting him at all.

“Dragon, crank it up, use your breath attack!”

Wang Long pointed out with his hand and the dragon opened up its large toothy maw. In front of it, the lightning energy started to condense into a shape of a circle before it was fired off towards Zhang Dong.

If Wang Long had any battle sense in him, he would know that something wasn’t right. His opponent didn’t even try escaping after the first attack was broken and he did nothing to dodge this one either.

The torrent of energy connected and everyone was greeted with a magnificent light show. The elders that were fighting in the distance looked to the side and even some from the United Element’s Sect cried out in fright.

Zhang Dong that was inside of this torrent of energy on the other hand didn’t move a muscle. He just let this energy flow through him while concentrating. The terrifying energy blast that was just pure condensed lightning energy instead of increasing started to slowly falter and vanish.

“What? Dragon what are you doing, kill him!”

The Soul-Beast listened to its master and continued to inject more of its spiritual energy into the breath attack. Even when it did, the blast continued to diminish the moment it connected with Zhang Dong.

After the prolonged discharge, even Wang Long started getting tired as the energy source for the soul beast was directly him.

“What? Is that all?”

Soon Zhang Dong’s armored form was revealed to be there and without damage. His whole body was radiating newfound power as he managed to absorb all of the lightning energy that came his way into his lightning core.

“You probably didn’t go past the cultivation upgrading part that was provided by your system, did you?”

“Huh? What are you talking about, I picked the best cultivation upgrade that there is!”

Zhang Dong wanted to smile as he knew that he had gone in a different direction by focusing on his crafting abode upgrades. He had pushed his own cultivation past the initial upgrade offered by his system by grinding crafting upgrade points.

Wang Long on the other hand was content on just going with the highest upgrade available to him at the given point. Without anything to strive for he didn’t try to find any other ways to improve his cultivation past what the system was giving him.

Thus he was not able to fathom how Zhang Dong was just able to absorb all of the lightning energies into himself and take no damage.

“I must thank you, I wasn’t sure where I could get enough lightning energy to charge my lightning core.”

Zhang Dong had absorbed all of the spirit crystals, holy weapons, and items that he could get his hands on but there was a certain lack of electric energy to get. When he was a nascent soul master he mostly used natural storms as cultivation aid and didn’t stock up on anything like lightning crystals.

Thanks to this lightning-based attack though he was all filled up. The nascent soul that he absorbed previously covered his soul core and the spirit crystals and holy herbs that he managed to get, were enough to fill up his golden core. It was time to skip a realm and finally reach the great circle of core formation.