Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 193. High Hurdle to Cross.

With the thirty-plus men of the Black Sword Unit rushing forward, straight at Yimar Maar, Laien and Yin understood that it was no time for feeling guilt or even gratitude. They waited half a second for their allies to run past them and to be just about to engage with Yimar Maar, then they moved to their left, towards the cliff-wall of the cone-shaped path. They had abundant battle experience, so they hadn’t had any trouble with figuring out what the best course of action would be for them. The center of this leftmost path would be blocked by the battle between Yimar Maar and the Black Sword Unit, while Sirius appeared to have taken Arslan and the others to the leftmost side. Thus, they first had to take care of the ruby-golden-robed elites towards the left and as for those further towards the right, they could wait a few more seconds before they became an urgent threat.

“They split into two halves,” Laien mused, his powerful aura mixed with the Aspect of Awareness spreading far and wide. “Ten martial masters of the fifth rank, almost one hundred of the fourth, and over forty of the third in each group. Casimir, Anna, and five of their Royal Guards will catch up within seconds… but it’s not going to be easy,” he thought, the words flowing freely between his and Yin’s minds. Now that their souls were stronger and their Spiritual Link was established, the two of them discovered that they could hold such a detailed conversation within their minds in split-seconds. Still, the downside of this process was that it required a lot of concentration and as far as they could tell, it would be exhausting mentally if done over longer periods of time.

“One-fifth...” Laien thought once again. “We both have a little less than half of our energy left, so let’s set a limit. Unless we really have no other choice, we’ve got to preserve one-fifth to deal with Abdain once this here is done,” he suggested and quickly received an agreement from Yin. The two of them didn’t feel the need to discuss anything else, so they didn’t bother maintaining the overly clear version of the Spiritual Link and instead, they focused on what was in front of their eyes.

“Come forth,” Laien murmured as he steadied himself with his spear in hand and once again released three river-like waves of insights. He didn’t infuse them with any additional spiritual energy just yet and instead, he sent them forward at the incoming one hundred and fifty enemies. Under his control, the three nimble surges of still seemingly harmless insights flowed through the air and soon, once the first enemies entered the range of seventy meters from him, they changed into the icy mist. The three surges of white mist then proceeded to avoid the martial masters of the fifth and fourth ranks as they slipped in-between the sprinting men, targeting exclusively martial masters of the third rank.

In this way, those forty-plus martial masters of the third rank started dying one after another under Laien’s magic, all of them freezing to death, helpless to resist on their own. Their allies refused to stop and waste time to help them, and due to how crowded they were while running, the martial masters of the third rank themselves couldn’t afford to wantonly release martial techniques. In the first place, people on their level weren’t qualified to resist Laien’s Phantasmal Essence, so when unfavorable circumstance was added to the mix, it was no surprise that a massacre ensued.

By the time those charging men reached thirty meters away from Laien, just by the time Yin came forward to fight their frontlines, over half of the martial masters of the third rank was gone. Subsequently, the martial masters of the fourth rank started dying to Yin’s sword while attempting to make their way past him. For Yin, who came to excel at killing enemies who were going all-out against him, it was all too easy to kill off those who were trying to shove him out of the way with all-out attacks. Not to mention, with his Lightning Steps he was more than capable of abusing the fools who willingly showed their back to him once they passed by his side. With one of Laien’s river-like waves of insights supporting him from time to time, he killed pretty much with every leap he made.

Within seconds, the elites Yimar Maar had taken hundreds of years to gather and hone were being killed off like chickens. If everything kept going like that, then the entire group of one hundred and fifty would soon be decimated. Alas, the ten unit-leaders, the martial masters of the fifth rank, recognized that trying to push their way past Laien and Yin, the two Devils coming to fame, was a fool’s errand. There weren’t many practitioners in the world who possessed the ability to slaughter elites so quickly and efficiently, but those two Devils appeared to excel in this kind of a battle.

“Keep running!” One of the martial masters of the fifth rank yelled with the aid of his Qi, his gaze focusing on the steadily retreating Ice Devil. He didn’t need to waste his breath to communicate with the other nine team-leaders though, as they could recognize one another’s intentions just from their subtle flow of movements. All of them harbored no silly ideas that they could suppress the extremely fast Lightning Devil, but as long as they pressured the other one, they should be able to force both of those monsters to stop in their tracks for a period of time, or so their plan was. Of course, if they managed to kill one or both of those Devils, they wouldn’t complain about it either.

“Tch.” Seeing that the ten strongest men were targeting him, Laien couldn’t help but click his tongue. He had just finished off the last of the martial masters of the third rank and was about to thoroughly focus on helping Yin in the slaughter of the martial masters of the fourth rank, but doing so no longer appeared to be feasible. Somewhat unwilling, he dispersed the three already sent-out river-like waves of insights and created three new ones right around himself. He infused one of them into the mix of Qi and spiritual energy that was flowing around his spear and had the other two circle around him in preparation for his own defense. He might have gotten incredibly strong compared to the past, but he wasn’t delusional enough to think that he could face ten elite martial masters of the fifth rank in a half-assed manner and think that he was going to survive to see the tomorrow’s sunrise.

“At the very least,” Laien mused with a sour smile. “They don’t seem to be about to use any powerful martial techniques. If they were willing to sacrifice most of their companions and released a series of all-out martial techniques at me when Yin was still further away than now, they might have forced us into a very bad spot,” he thought in a vague manner, rather pondering the rough idea than forming any coherent sentences. Still, before those ten annoying bastards came at him, he defended three times against the attacks of the martial masters of the fourth rank while retreating backwards, and thrice he used the two spare river-like waves of insights to create ice spikes to exploit the men’s openings. Naturally, the result of these three quick clashes were three more corpses on the ground.

“Counting Yin’s share, we killed seventy-something of them, huh,” Laien mused. He was unsure whether he should be satisfied or not, but considering that they used up roughly five seconds to achieve this much, it wasn’t too bad. Of course, however, the seventy-plus of the ruby-golden-robed elites they had killed were the weakest amongst the original one hundred and fifty, so the overall combat strength of their enemies decreased by three tenths at best. “We should try and kill as many of those martial masters of the fifth rank, then we have to rush to block those coming from the right,” Laien thought to himself and at the same time, sent the idea towards Yin. Even considering that the remaining members of the Black Sword Unit were doing their best to block Yimar Maar and obstruct that second group of one hundred and fifty elites from moving past their side freely, it was only just enough to buy them seven seconds. They had used up five of them, so only two remained.

“No time to waste,” Laien murmured in his heart as he watched one wind-element and one fire-element martial master of the fifth rank coming at him from left and right. “Black Sword lost more than dozen men to delay both Yimar Maar and the second half of his elites, so he will be able to break free soon, too. We’ve got to hurry,” he thought, but unlike the urgent words could suggest, his mind was fairly calm. Of course, he was full of adrenaline as he was in the middle of a life-or-death battle, but he wasn’t panicking despite the high stakes and despite the daunting task which befell him and Yin. In fact, Yin’s emotional state was very similar, perhaps only slightly worse off in comparison to his emotional state, the difference being his own vastly superior accomplishments in cultivating the Aspect of Tranquility, with the breakthrough from just the other day in mind.

“Heh.” Laien smirked as the two men were taking their swings at him. “Time to use up some spiritual energy and Qi,” he thought almost playfully and moved his spear to entangle and deflect the blow of the wind-element martial master. If he were to choose, he would rather receive an attack from a fire-element enemy because those people rarely wielded techniques with high penetrative power. For example, even Yimar Maar, who had developed a martial technique for this exact purpose, still failed to deliver any real damage to him despite the difference in ranks. Thus, if needed he could use his Ice Body to forcefully withstand a few blows… but, that was only if needed.

While the fire-element expert to his left was baffled by the opening he intentionally displayed to him, Laien released a great amount of Qi and spiritual energy from his body and in the blink of an eye, he covered the area of fifteen meters with thick ice mist. Unlike the large-scale version which relied mainly on insights to display its strength, this ice mist was far more threatening and it instantly forced all ten martial masters of the fifth rank to use Qi to defend themselves from the frost. Moreover, the prevalent mixture of insights and energy dulled their senses and confused their auras, what Laien saw as more important of the effects under the current set of circumstances.

“You first,” Laien smiled as he sent two river-like waves at the sole water-element martial master of the fifth rank who had been staying further in the back. Then, four things happened all at once, separated by perhaps the smallest fractions of a second. First, he deflected the blow of the nearby wind-element opponent. Second, emerald lightning flashed before his eyes and the head of the fire-element martial master of the fifth rank was cut in two horizontally, what needless to say resulted in him dying instantaneously. Thus, the fiery sword which soon fell onto his body ended up lacking any real strength behind it and with Ice Body’s defenses, it failed to leave even a scratch. Finally, the water-element martial master in the back lost control of his energy and just like those dozens of people at the beginning of the battle, he exploded into a pile of blood and gore.

“That’s two,” Laien smirked once again, killing intent flashing in his currently starry-field-like pupils. Having just deflected an attack from the wind-element marital master, he wasn’t about to allow the man to retreat his sword freely. He pulled onto the waves of his Water Flow Spear Art and with his motion, he pulled the sword to the side and threatened to follow-up with a deadly thrust were the man to not resist the flow of exchange. The obvious discrepancy in their weapon arts, just like Laien wanted, caused the man to feel some fright as he stiffened up and tried to break up the exchange forcefully by using strength and a lot of Qi. Alas, he was about to disappoint the man as instead of competing with him, he suddenly withdrew both his strength and the water flow, what resulted in the man staggering for a split-second as the force he expected to fight with went and disappeared.

This small opening was more than enough for Yin, who similarly was no longer stingy with his Qi. In another flash of emerald lightning, he moved right to the man’s side and slashed at his lower stomach with one of his twin swords. The man attempted to dodge, and thanks to his agility and abundant battle-experience he did manage to move out of the way considerably, but he failed to avoid the blow completely and received a mild cut. Had Yin not been going all-out, it wouldn’t have been enough, but the man soon discovered, to his immense shock, that he was utterly incapable of suppressing the lightning which entered his body. Objectively speaking, though, it was no surprise as Yin was not only using his innate Heavenly Lightning but was also infusing it with Phantasmal Essence. Against this strength, those with inferior internal defenses could only roll over and die the moment they allowed a decent amount of lightning to directly enter their bodies.

That being said, before the man could come to terms with his shock, the lightning invaded his Qi Origin and shattered it, destroying his cultivation base and robbing him of the very majority of his battle potential. With this much done, Yin didn’t need to bother with delivering a second blow as right afterwards, the icy mist turned the man into an ice sculpture and killed him for good.

“And that’s three,” Yin mused, his and Laien’s thoughts flowing freely between their two souls. “And for the fourth,” he smiled at the idea of what the two of them were doing and suppressed his aura and killing intent. While he hid himself, Laien didn’t do so at all, so inevitably the attention of their enemies headed towards him. However, how could those people possibly harm Laien in a short-period of time if they were blinded by the thick icy mist and if he was supporting Laien from the shadows? If the two of them had a little more time, then killing all of those ten martial masters of the fifth rank would be perfectly doable, all they would have to do was to expend more energy to do so.

Be it as it may, Yin briefly roused his Qi and used his emerald lightning to kill the man who was defending from the ice spikes created by Laien’s Phantasmal Essence. Having claimed the fourth kill, he went back to suppressing his aura while Laien jumped into the spot he had been in, then proceeded to defend from the three incoming attacks with his Spear Arts. Using this as another opportunity, Yin first killed the most vulnerable of the three, one on whom Laien had focused his freely-moving Phantasmal Essence, then used Lightning Steps and with a little bit of luck involved, he killed another of the three attackers. Regrettably, once he did that he had no choice but to back off, grab Laien and move backwards with him in tow while repeatedly executing Lightning Steps. They had killed six out of the ten of their enemies within the time limit, with what they were satisfied.

Including the beginning of this clash, they had killed over eighty of those elites. With the weakest half and the six out of the ten martial masters of the fifth rank gone, the overall strength of this unit should have been reduced to about half, maybe even less. They had also used up less energy than they expected, leaving both of them with roughly one-third of their full reservoirs. Considering that Casimir, Anna, and five of their Royal Guards had just hit the backs of this weakened unit and started killing them off, their goal of not going below one-fifth of their energy capacity was within reach. After all, the moment they got rid of the strongest enemies and the pressure on them was elevated, they would be able to rely on their powerful insights to deal with what remained of those elites.

“Soğuk, sel düşük.”

The two of them arrived in the back just in time to see Sirius finish a long chant to an ice-element spell. The magic moved indiscriminately, encompassing the layer of about ten centimeters above the ground and aiming to obstruct the movements of all in its path. Luckily, it wasn’t an issue for them as Laien easily pushed the ice away from their feet without obstructing the spell as a whole. Still, against all of those elites, a full-chant spell of a spiritual master of the fifth rank wasn’t even enough to buy them half a second of time. The most it did was to force all those ruby-golden-robed elites to use Qi in order to break the ice forming around their feet two or three times in a row.

Yet, this magic of Sirius’s didn’t prove to be entirely without a point as seemingly out of nowhere, three wind-element martial masters of the fifth rank screamed out in pain. Two of them then fell flat down to the ground, their bodies frozen up to the waist level, their Qi Origins destroyed and the cold quickly progressing upwards to swallow them whole. The third one similarly fell down, but thanks to him decisively using wind blades to cut off his own legs just below the waist level, he kept his life and preserved his cultivation base. However, his hopes for survival were quickly extinguished as the three water-element martial masters of the fourth rank who sped up towards him stiffened up. Their eyes full of terror, the three followed in the footsteps of all other water-element practitioners in Yimar Maar’s army and went up in a puff of bloody gore, killed by their own rampaging Qi.

“Only six remaining here,” Laien smiled in satisfaction. It was a cheap trick, hiding his Phantasmal Essence in Sirius’s spiritual energy and ambushing three wind-element martial masters of the fifth rank with it. However, he would lose very little if it didn’t work out and would gain a lot if it did, so the gamble was worth taking. In the grand scheme of things, his enemies were still more or less unaware of what he was capable of, so it wasn’t like the chances of success were fifty-fifty, either. With the concept of Phantasmal Essence being pretty much non-existent in the Starlight Continent, at least as far as he knew, he was bound to hold a great advantage over his enemies until the rumors about him spread… and even then, that advantage would only be diminished, not nullified.

“Hm.” Right after killing the three martial masters of the fifth rank, Laien frowned slightly. “It would be good if we could kill the other six as soon as possible. Then the four from back there… they turned around to delay Casimir? So, those six first. They are all too close to Arslan, Johan, and the others, so it would be hard to defend them with those six pressing the charge,” the series of half-formed thoughts crossed his mind. The goal was clear, but it wasn’t so easy to accomplish. It wasn’t like he and Yin could handily cooperate like just a few seconds ago since those six here had their eyes set on Arslan, who had apparently retreated with Kasha and hid within the hundreds of horses in the corner. Moreover, they didn’t have the support of any elites like those of White Sword or Black Sword Units. They were powerful, but not powerful enough to effortlessly kill elite martial masters of the fifth rank within seconds without holding any additional advantages over them.

If anything, they wouldn’t be able to accomplish that without taking on any risks… without trying a gamble of a kind. If they wanted to kill those six quickly, they had to not only gather them into one spot, but to make them want to stay in the same spot, at least at first. In order to achieve that, Laien himself wouldn’t be very useful due to the kind of abilities he wielded. However, if they used Yin and played their cards right, then they would be able to force the hand of those strongest elites. That being said, even though Laien was the one who realized this possibility first and Yin affirmed it as the right choice right afterwards, in his heart Laien didn’t like this plan in the slightest.

Alas, it wasn’t like the two of them were in any position to pick and choose. They couldn’t come up with anything better that would have a realistic chance of success either, at least not within split-seconds, so no matter how dissatisfied Laien was, they had to go through with what they had. Thus, Laien grit his teeth and separated from Yin, moving towards Sirius and the others and soon stopping in the way of the incoming ruby-golden-robed elites. He immediately covered the area behind himself with a crescent-shaped layer of icy mist that was four to five meters thick. If all those elites charged past him madly, then even if he used all of his remaining energy he wouldn’t be able to stop them in time, so he hoped to make them hesitate. After all, if those six martial masters of the fifth rank were taken out of the picture, then he could kill those remaining elites with his Phantasmal Essence without much trouble. As long as he clearly indicated that the first ones to enter the layer of mist would be targeted by him and killed for sure, he might be able to gain some precious time.

“For now,” Laien mused as he swirled his spear and released a few streams of water, preparing to defend his piece of land. “Yin’s going more from the center, so I might as well go all the way to the right,” he thought while stepping further sideways in a few smooth leaps. That being said, he naturally wasn’t wasting his time during this brief second of preparation and was using all three of his river-like waves of insights to quickly slaughter the forty-plus martial masters of the third rank in this group of enemies. He had become more and more comfortable with manipulating his Phantasmal Essence as his practical experience accumulated, so he no longer used one river-like wave to kill one enemy at a time but instead, he created small spikes and needles of ice and killed two to three martial masters of the third rank at once. In this way, what had taken him about four seconds in the clash with the first one-hundred-and-fifty-man-strong unit was almost completed after one second.

Needless to be said, even though those dying were the weakest amongst them, the rate of slaughter startled those experts far more than the icy mist behind Laien. Those martial masters of the fourth rank… it wasn’t that they were scared of death, but they didn’t wish to die senselessly either. So, almost all of them involuntarily slowed down half a step, driven by their subconscious thoughts. If they entered that icy mist a bit later, then wouldn’t they have a far greater chance to survive? This Ice Devil appeared to be going all out, too, so wasn’t weathering the storm all they had to do to enjoy their comfortable lives as they had gotten used to? This reduction of tempo was very small at first, but within mere ten meters, it became very noticeable as the more one’s companions slowed to his left and right, the slower they were willing to charge. Yet, just as the remaining six team-leaders were about to shout out orders and break this worrying trend, a certain event dazed them.

The Lightning Devil, whom they had been on guard against the entire time, attacked one of their wind-element martial masters of the fifth rank. Whether the green-haired Devil wanted to make use of the moment of confusion spreading amongst their units or whether the Devil was simply unlucky, he failed to dodge their companion’s slash. The Devil, in consequence of failing to force his way in for the sure-fire-kill, had his right arm almost slashed off at the shoulder and suffered a grievous wound to his chest, one that revealed the white of his ribs and caused masses of blood to spurt out.