While laughing like a maniac, the changes to the man’s body didn’t stop. Veins continued to grow larger, bulging and twisting in unnatural fashion. The flesh on his left arm started to slowly inflate like a balloon, the veins crawling into new patterns and shapes as it did. The man’s skin started to look more like jello, wobbling and jiggling without a larger skeleton to support the suddenly large mass of flesh. The expanding started in his arm, but didn’t stop there. The flesh of his shoulder and neck started to bloat. His back twisted in a macabre fashion, bending unnaturally as the now many times larger than normal arm fell to the ground. A meaty fist pressed a knuckle into the ground like a gorilla to support itself. Then his back bent the other way as the arm kept getting bigger. It got so large it was bigger than the rest of his whole body.

Sage watched in amazement as the man’s arm grew so large that it was up over his head and his back and shoulder twisted and reshaped themselves so the rest of his body looked like a tripod holding up a huge misshapen arm. It had muscles in all the wrong places and had even sprouted dozens of small growths that from afar looked like hairs, but were actually just normal sized fingers. The man let out a loud yell and then finally the bulging mutations of his flesh stopped. His skin seemed to deflate, but only slightly. The ballooning skin started to look less like a balloon of fat and more like muscle, albeit way too big and with all the wrong structure.

His shoulders were twisted to the side, putting the man’s head at a permanent tilt to the side. Where his head and shoulders used to normally sit, there was now only a large shoulder and from it an arm just as large as the rest of the man’s body. He’d been turned into some sort of freakish human version of an excavator. Despite the end of the mad laughter, and the angry yell, there now seemed to be a look of sad acceptance on his face. He braced his legs and then leaned back. The man’s back and waist looked quite a bit thicker than before. While he looked similar from the front, the muscles on his back half had multiplied, creating a more stable base for that freakish arm. Then the huge arm lifted up into the air and the thick twisted fingers slowly clenched into a fist the size of the man’s whole torso. He leaned back like he was holding a giant sea fishing rod, balancing the whole weight in front of himself.

“Gross.”

Sage couldn’t help himself, it was just too drastic and terrible of a change. With how powerful the poisonous atmosphere was, he had no idea it could turn out creating such drastic mutations. Something must be drastically different between the bodies of the people in this world and the cultivation world. We both look human, but just the many billions of microbes and bacteria from two different worlds could be drastically different, so there’s no telling what might be the root cause.

When the freakish enemy heard Sage speak, his eyes grew large. There was a flash of understanding in his eyes and he pointed a finger of that giant freak hand at Sage. Then the hand flipped to palm side up and beckoned to Sage. Is he trying to get me to tackle him again? Does he think that freaky arm is going to be powerful?

“Idiot.”

Even if the man couldn’t understand him, Sage couldn’t help himself. He was bleeding from quite a few ‘bullet’ holes from those crystal shards and his bones still ached from a heavy impact that cracked them. All of this was caused without any choice on his own part as this psychopath busted out of the wall and ambushed him. Did the fool think he went to all that trouble to tear off the gas mask for no reason? Yes, he did want to see what would happen when the man lost his mask, but that was only a bonus.

Sage took in a quick, sharp breath of air. And for him, someone who cultivated the Divine Breath technique, a quick, sharp breath of air was enough to cause a vacuum effect. All of the air in a ten foot area was pulled into his body, the sudden displacement causing a wind effect that kicked up dust and made a strange whirling breeze in the area. All of that air was merely used to ‘fill’ his lungs and allow the terrifying amount of compressed air inside his body to be used smoothly. Without first creating a matching pressure zone on the outside, if he used the Divine Breath technique at full power, it would be like a bomb going off inside his body. That quick breath created a high pressure zone in his throat and lungs.

Normally, he wasn’t so meticulous when he used Divine Breath, but this time he called upon one of the Heavenly Materials and he was being very careful. Stormbreath, the Heavenly Wind that had been sealed up and used as a treasure in ancient times for this purpose. The Breath of the Storm, the fury of the wind and skies. It was actually the only truly offensively oriented Heavenly Material he had, but the winds of a storm were not something delicate and easily controlled. When the Jade Horde rebelled, he hadn’t yet had much time to adapt to it and Wu Chang was a wind user. When he’d been trying to advance his understanding of laws while ‘working’ for Guan Zhenyan he’d used the Heavenly Materials as a reference and finally felt the full power of Stormbreath.

Divine Breath wasn’t made to create powerful wind like breath. It was originally created specifically as a method to control Stormbreath and other Heavenly Winds. It was so strong and uncontrollable that an ancient cultivator decided that he would use the natural way a human controls air. He would use his mouth, throat, and lungs. Like a tiny frog or lizard, Sage’s whole chest and throat suddenly bulged and expanded. Then he dropped down onto all fours, digging his feet into the ground and bracing himself with his hands.

The man with the giant hand saw Sage’s throat bulge out and a hint of confusion came into his eyes. He tried to take a step forward since it seemed Sage wasn’t going to approach, but that step threw him off balance. That arm was just too large that it took him a few tries before he got the hang of moving with his center of gravity at his shoulder up where his head used to be. Surprisingly, there were no more telekinetically launched rocks and debris, something that Sage found odd.

The careful breath, bulging throat and drop to the ground were quite fast and the giant armed guy didn’t have much time to react. When Sage’s mouth opened, he didn’t realize what had happened until he realized he felt wet. He looked down and saw a hole about three inches wide clean through his thigh. He saw the edge of the bone and a perfect circular indentation. At that time, his body and the surroundings finally responded. There was a deafening boom and the building beside him was blasted away. Huge pieces of rubble and debris were sent flying away. The man smashed his giant left fist down against the ground and held his place. The world around him seemed to fly away, leaving him in a trench a dozen yards wide.

On the other end of that attack, Sage had slid backwards. A ten foot long trench ended at each of his four limbs where they were buried into the torn up concrete and asphalt. That was the first time he’d released the full strength of Stormbreath. He used his Qi and Spirit Power to create a super compressed ball of air. Then he used the Divine Breath technique to alter his lungs and throat into something like a cannon. Stormbreath was the powder and the shell was the compressed ball of air. It was like a bullet, firing a hole clean through the man’s leg. It moved so fast he didn’t even feel it. Only, Sage had a hard time controlling and aiming it, even with the help of Foresight to correct his aim. He also wasn’t strong enough yet, as the wake of the shot completely devastated such a huge area. It was power that did nothing to people on his level, but caused terrible collateral damage to the surroundings.

Sage immediately started breathing in again, causing more havoc with the surrounding air patterns. The enemy wasn’t down, merely bleeding and unstable. The giant arm reached forward and grabbed the ground. Then he swung his whole body forward like he was using a massive crutch. He braced his feet and the arm advanced again. In only a few seconds he was rapidly swinging himself forward and closing the distance between them.