Let us pause the action here for a moment and talk about the cultivation path followed by our Hero.

Cultivators in general go down two different paths. The path of Heavenly Communion or the Demonic Path. Now, don’t go mixing up Demonic Path with Devil cultivators.

The poor muscleheads will get really offended at the misunderstanding.

While the monikers Devil, Chaotic, Neutral or Orthodox relate with a moral standpoint, Paths are just different ways to cultivate with World Vitality.

Our Hero follows the Path of Heavenly Communion. Thus, he had to start with the Sensing the Heavens realm where he had learnt to sense the World Vitality by cutting off all five of his senses and remaining there till he could.

Next, he had to learn how to affect World Vitality and induce it to enter his body through the breath. This was the Breathing with the Heavens realm.

Then it was a matter of opening his acupoints to allow intercommunication of the World Vitality within his body and outside it. This was the Attuning to the Heavens realm.

Finally, he was required to treat his body like a flute and world vitality as the air which passed in and out through the acupoints creating a melody that instructed the world vitality in the surroundings about what to do. This was the Communing with the Heavens realm.

This was the highest realm that most cultivators reached in their extended life of two hundred years.

Only one in 10,000 could hope of attaining the pinnacle of the Path whereby one could sense the nearly imperceptible flows of World Vitality and use it to enhance the might of their attacks or use it to try and sense the Void in order to attack the Shattered Void realm. This was the Knowing the Will of the Heavens realm.

Demonic Path cultivators have the first two steps the same, following which, instead of opening acupoints, they seal these acupoints and excavate their dantian and meridians in which they gather ever increasing amounts of World Vitality until it liquefies and then solidifies.

Finally, it is supposed to reach a high enough concentration to warp the fabric of reality enough to reach the Void. The difficulty in the Demonic Path lay in succeeding in tempering one’s body enough to hold the ever more concentrated energies without exploding.

Some people even called the cultivators on the different paths Qi cultivators and Mages.

Alright, let us get back to our Heroic Mage as he faces off against a wrinkly midget from the Earth country… sure we aren’t talking about gnomes here?

…

Onoki felt wet. His army felt drenched. The members of the Suna army too were bedraggled.

The cause of this floated a few hundred metres from him, on a platform of sand, taking in the sight of his handiwork with great interest.

The valleys had turned into lakes and the canyons into streams. Sopping wet shinobi were emerging from the water, onto land high enough not to be submerged.

The subterranean squad of the rock ninja were the ones worst off as they had been caught off guard when their tunnels had been flooded.

They were among the very few squads who had casualties. After all they were shinobi. A soaking wasn’t really fatal, no matter how large in scale it was.

Onoki blew away a strand of his hair which had plastered itself on his face after his topknot had come loose in the deluge.

His rock golem and two clones had expired as had the particle style attack which he had been fermenting.

His innermost feelings sobbed. Really wilful. Oh, what he would be capable of with unlimited chakra like the smug bastard in front of him.

Rasa who had been spectating their fight felt the corners of his mouth twitch. Looking at Onoki’s pitiful state, he suddenly had feelings of like grieving for like.

The bastard probably had a fetish for pounding people with gigantic objects.

First, it was two colossal cauldrons condensed from sand. Now, it had upgraded to the level of an entire lake’s worth of water.

He shuddered to speculate what it could be next time.

Onoki’s eyes flashed with an intense spunk. It had been more than a decade since someone had toyed with him in this manner.

His hands blurred into motion completing his seals in the blink of an eye. Putty seemed to seep out of his pores, solidifying into rock armour.

The armour encompassed his entire body, only leaving a T shaped gap in the helmet through which his eyes filled with killing intent were visible.

With an angry shout, the Tsuchikage battered towards him.

Lin Feng grew dignified.

As a Heavenly Communion cultivator, close combat was his weak link. This had been solved when he had broken through the Shattered Void realm.

So long as he had Void Force, any attack incapable of shattering space would be kept off by the spatial turbulence surrounding his body. Like the kunai thrown by the sand shinobi scout which had been twisted into a pretzel.

Unfortunately, he had run out of all his accumulated Void Force when he was sealing the four-tails.

Thankfully, he wasn’t totally defenceless. Shukaku was the tailed beast infamous for being the defensively strongest.

Its tortoise-shell had even the true turtle, the three-tails, beat in terms of defence.

Onoki’s rock clad fist smashed into a barrier of sand scattering it but unable to penetrate further.

Undeterred, he flit around Lin Feng, laying into the barrier from all directions while avoiding or tanking the barrage of air bullets shot by him.

Lin Feng’s brows furrowed deeper and deeper as it became increasingly harder to control the sand as with each hit, the part that came in contact with Onoki became a little heavier.

This way, he would soon lose his cover.

Suddenly, his eyes grew bright as the opportunity presented itself.

It was the problem Demonic Path cultivators faced when fighting Mages like him. As the Demonic cultivators used the energy inside them, the origin point of whatever technique they used was their body.

Mages on the other hand could have their spells originate from anywhere within the range of their control.

As everyone in this plane used chakra in a fashion similar to Demonic Cultivators. They wouldn’t have come up with tactics to counter this.

Just as Onoki approached for another attack, walls of water surrounded him from all directions and imprisoned him.

The space within quickly filled with water which began to swirl around violently to keep him disoriented and make using a jutsu difficult.

Lin Feng kept increasing the volume of water surrounding the Tsuchikage to ensure that he couldn’t escape.

After a few minutes of futile struggles, the warrior grew still.

All this while, the Iwa Shinobi had struggled furiously against the entanglement of the Sand ninja in order to get free and assist their leader.

Yet, the sand shinobi, encouraged by their impending success had delayed them long enough.

With a booming laugh, Lin Feng approached the water prison in order to extract the unconscious Kage in order to prevent his death and to use him as a hostage against Iwa.

Maybe he could fish for the dominion of another hidden village.

A profound sense of crisis covered him and he immediately dodged.

He was just in time to avoid a broad beam of white light that passed through the edge of the water prison, dispersing it.

The limp body of the Kage dropped to the ground, but before Lin Feng could snag it, Onoki’s rock clone, which had hidden in the bottom of the newly created lake all this time, leapt out and caught it. It was the one who had sneak attacked him.

It ordered for all Iwa shinobi to retreat and sped away from the battlefield as fast as possible.

The Sand shinobi gave chase but didn’t pursue too tightly or too far as their goal (they had no idea that Rasa had been bullshitting) of capturing the tailed-beast had been accomplished and the opposite parties’ leader injured.

As they took inventory of the casualties, Lin Feng looked at the sleeve of his left hand which had been disintegrated along with some skin and flesh on his arm.

The wound was already healing due the regeneration rate bonus from the world vitality but it was a reminder that he wasn’t totally safe in this world.