Before Jing’s Fight - Vincent

Jing ran across my garden and into “Jing’s Secret Workshop”. A tank burst out from within and rolled off my property.

A spear flew at my house. All the normal trees burst into flames behind it. It only stopped after it lodging itself into the Treefather planted above my house. It kept leaking heat and spewing fire. It melted my house and set the plants growing on the Treefather on fire. The treefather itself was almost unharmed, sasuga a thirteen thousand mana tree.

I traced the trajectory of the spear to see where it came from. It was the same old man who had tried to kill Chen Wei months ago. He was only one among the twelve elders who had come.

What was that elder called again? Elder Zao? Elder Zhu?

Two other people hung in the sky, surrounded by fire. They appeared to be more powerful than the elders. I guess they’re Crimson Fire Sect’s ancestors.

It doesn’t matter who these people are. I need to finish with these people and rescue Hui Ming, but it wouldn’t be easy.

The anger from before subsided into serene irritation. I couldn’t go into a maddened rampage. I had a goal and a rampage wasn’t going to help.

The people in front of me had to go. I need to remove myself from my anger and come up with the most effective way to get rid of them.

The twelve elders charged at me. Each of them were at the eighth or ninth stage. They wielded all kinds of weapons, from bows to hammers to fans. The only trait that all shared was the crimson fire pouring off their bodies. A tsunami of red flames filled my vision and crashed down on me.

Vincent the Cultivator

Lv7

MP : 11985/13000

An arrow hit my head and left a small scrape. I slapped a sword and hammer aside. I weathered the rest of the blows with my body. I was faster and stronger than any of these elders. Their fires didn’t bother me.

I could tank any individual attack or set of attacks, but they could stack up. I grabbed one of the elders by the neck and squeezed to make sure he didn’t escape. An explosive bulb I had planted a long time ago rose up from underground. It detonated, pushing my attackers away. The only one who wasn’t pushed away was the elder I had grabbed.

Divide and conquer, a tried and true strategy used for tens of thousands of years.

I tossed the elder behind me. The treefather caught him and injected him with all kinds of poisons. I had created over a dozen by accident while experimenting with alchemy. All of these entered the elder’s bloodstream.

One down, eleven to go.

They came at me again.

A thin layer of normal plants covered the surface layer of my garden. Beneath that was a much thicker layer of plants that I designed. The second layer of plants were all at least as tough as metal and specialized in something.

Hundreds. No. Thousands of these plants flew out from underground. Explosive bulbs mixed in with Vines covered in Poison Spikes. Blades coming out of Protects attached to the end of a Vine, swung around like a mace. Twentytacle traps swinging around like tentacled monstrosities.

Depending on how many I had to control, I couldn’t control them very well.

I was only one person. Controlling these things was like controlling my hands. Controlling one was easy, especially considering the affinity I had with my plants. Controlling two to do different things was more difficult. With some training, I might be able to control five plants doing different things at the same time. Controlling thousands was out of the question.

But a single general action was easy to pull off. The plants jumped into the air in unison, making it look like the earth had taken flight.

But the illusion only lasted for a split second. It wasn’t the earth that had jumped, but countless alien plants.

I took this chance to capture another elder with a Twentytacle Trap. The elder was close enough to me that I could attack him on my own. Fifty mana drained from me and became two poison spikes. I held one in each hand and stabbed both into the elders neck. The spikes were barely hard enough to pierce his skin, but they did their job and he went limp.

Two out of five Prolong slots left!

I sighed in relief. If they were still using the seeds, that meant they were still fighting. If they were still fighting, they were still alive.

But it was also a sort of countdown timer. Each seed used brought them closer to death.

“You monster!” yelled an enormous elder. His muscular and bulky frame reminded me of orges. He leaped at me with a hurricane of Qi.

I would’ve been intimidated if this were the other world. But in this world, I could defeat ogres. I dropped the two old spikes. I expended two thousand mana creating two spikes, Improving them to be unbreakable. I bound the giant elder with a bundle of vines and charged him with the two Spikes.

An old woman appeared before me and pointed a staff at me. A blast of force hit me in the stomach and tossed me into the air. An old man was waiting for me in the sky.

He pulled up the sleeves of his robes. All of the fire around him flowed into his palms. He pushed his palm at me. I blocked with my forearm. A cut formed across my arm. His palm sent me shooting back into the earth.

I grimaced from the scorching heat on my forearm. This old man’s fire was enough to get past my upgraded body’s defenses.

“Many thanks, Ancestors,” the muscular elder mumbled.