The corrupted being was fast and as it rushed, it sent some weird parts of its own body out. They were projectiles difficult to deal with. Even while mid-air, they kept on changing forms and dividing. Was it a distraction? Was it something else? It didn't matter. Jin waited for the projectiles to reach him and deflected each of them with a nice hit from his own spear. Thanks to it being covered in the purification element, not only did the weird goo not manage to do anything to it but instead, the weird goo itself was purified and disintegrated into smoke.

As he saw what was happening, Jin became rather confident. He didn't believe for a second that the crude monster in front of him was better than him when it came to techniques. And now that the question of element countering was solved, he had nothing to fear.

The monster saw what happened but didn't slow down. It was far smarter than Jin expected. It didn't send out projectiles to harm Jin but to gauge the weird lights surrounding him. They were quite blinding and gave a sense of danger to it. So, he decided to sound out the opponent. And he managed to witness quite a lot of clues from this long-range exchange. First, it managed to get an idea on how much, quantity-wise, energy was spent by his opponent to deal with him. Second, he noticed from where the energy came out. It was being supplied by the rings and two in particular. This was why he didn't stop his charge. He believed the man in front of him was relying on those rings to fight him.

Was there enough of the dangerous element in those rings to completely purify him? Unlikely.

Could he, himself, destroy those rings? Possible.

In the end, it was better for him to rush over. If he managed to destroy those rings, he wouldn't have to sacrifice too much of his own element. If he couldn't, well, he would win through the battle of attrition. Because it believed that once Jin couldn't take anything more from those rings, he would be unable to fight him.

The fact was that the corrupted being wasn't wrong.

Jin had many rings but they all contained different elements in different forms to deal with different situations. And there was a limit to the number of rings he had. Why did he only wear so few? He wore dozens. The problem did not lay in the number of rings he wore but what they held. He tried his best to keep as many different elements as possible so as to be prepared for all kinds of situation.

He first focused on the five origins, the two glorious and the four beyond. They were the most used and those who could counter the most situations. Then, he took his time to choose peculiar elements from the 12th category and only after finishing with that did he consider the composite elements. Purification was one such composite element made from light along with another element, either time, fire or lightning. Even though it was a very useful element, it wasn't the most useful to him and he didn't expect to face a corrupted being. He picked in case he ended up facing someone adept in curses or such.

One might think that since he had rings filled with fire, lightning, light and time, he could make more. He could not. The elements could mix but they would never fuse. He couldn't make that happen at his stage. If he mixed fire and lightning, he would end up with those two elements mixed together but nothing new.

Of course, he had yet to think this far.

At the moment, he was preparing himself for the fierce battle against the corrupted being. That monster was humanoid in shape and around his size. Not once did he think that it might hold more of itself than what was seen. Because he never faced such a situation. Few actually did since this element was banned even by those of the nefarious paths.

Time waited for no one.

They reached each other and began a savage melee. The corrupted being focused on reaching the rings he targeted while Jin gave it his all to redirect all of its tries while counter-attacking with the many spears he made. What irked him was that the weird being wasn't dodging at all and continued to tank every hit. Yet, it didn't seem to be affected.

Jin confirmed preciously that his element was potent against this monster and he could see that with every spear exploding upon it, some of the goo evaporated. Yet, more of it appeared to take the vacant space. He quickly realized the problem. But it was too late to change how he fought. They were too close and their speeds were matched.

He spotted what the corrupted being was after a few more exchanges and began to reconsider his previous conclusions. He had underestimated this monster due to its ugly appearance and seemingly stupid rush. It turned out that he had been the one to make a mistake. He didn't know the characteristics of his opponent but it knew enough of him and itself.

Its advantage was this self-recovery.

Now understanding the situation and having grasped everything, Jin decided to change his way of fighting. He stopped infusing the purification element into the dozen flying spears and his own. Instead, he focused on using it to protect himself, as if wearing an armor.

He knew he would likely lose in a battle of attrition since the monster rushed with such confidence. Then, he could only try something else.

Using the elements did give boosts in might to a cultivator but one shouldn't belittle the basis of it all which was the spiritual energy. Jin believed that attacking it with spiritual energy would work.

However, as he saw the spears go through the being without damaging him, and how it kept laughing madly while still sending his hands made into claws at him, he knew it wouldn't work either.