Neither side looked to be in good condition. The red skull was much dimmer than it had been earlier, and the huge cobra was missing a few feet off the end of its tail. They both seemed beat up and worn out, but there was also no signs that either were defeated.

Sage felt helpless.

He was a whole rank higher than Hei Bai when the battle started, but after the changes she’d undergone, it seemed she was now his equal. Annoyingly, she hadn’t actually broken through because of the Samsara Flame, but she had still found a way to use it to grow stronger. Just like she’d done with that Blood Ghost and the Green Flame Ghost in the past. She had some sort of method to assimilate soul related things and use it to improve her strength. The strength of a Nascent Soul was mainly within their laws, and Sage was still new to this realm. At the moment, he had only scratched the surface of what the Law of Corruption could do and was mainly using it like the Law of Poison in the past. His poisons were gathered from Guan Zhenyan and mostly affected the body. Only the poison from the Twin Ringed Soul Serpent was different, and even that only weakened Spirit Power. It was useless against a spirit form.

Spirit like beings were basically made up of energy and only other types of energy could affect them. Sage’s methods weren’t really focused in this regard as he’d always been the one using his Twin Soul as a spirit being to catch others off guard. Now that he was on the receiving end of such a tactic he was in a very foul mood. His only real energy attacks were the two Heavenly Flames, and another area he hadn’t spent much time on developing. He just had too many directions he could take his training, the options were overwhelming.

He’d had to fall back upon the technique he’d invented with Ruanfu, Wave Combustion. It didn’t have the same terrible side effect of burning up his own cultivation like the Six Dreadful Inferno Finger, one of the moves it was derived from, but it did still have the problem of causing his physical body damage. That was also a reason they changed it from a finger move to a tail attack. Losing the tip of the tail was far less detrimental than blowing off one’s own finger. Ruanfu liked to use it as a kick, and she’d trained her toes to have extremely wide pores so she could use more power without blowing her toes off, but to use Wave Combustion at full strength, she also used her tail.

Much of the strength of the move was wasted going up against Hei Bai in this manner, but only the explosive detonation harmed the spirit and so he was forced to use it at full power over and over again. As for his enemy, Sage no longer felt that terrible power from the fingerbone necklace radiating from her, but the Soul Clone was still heavily damaged by those eye beams. The feeling was gone, but the suppression upon spirit type enemies seemed to remain. On the plus side, the more she used those beams the dimmer the red skull became.

Sage didn’t know much about spirit type beings, but if they were anything like his Soul Clone, then their ‘body’ was their power. In the past, when his Twin Soul was damaged parts of it would crack and break off, reducing its size and overall strength. In gaming terms, he imagined that spirit type beings had only one pool of health points and mana. Those eye beams were powerful, but they also seemed to burn up Hei Bai’s life. Thinking to this point, from how the Twin Soul used the ‘Anima Devour’ technique to consume other souls, he also guessed that spirit type creatures had no ‘maximum health points’. They weren’t like a living creature that had a peak condition to heal back up to. There wasn’t ‘healing’ for them, there was only increasing their strength.

Sage categorized his deductions and studied the glowing ghostly red skull for a while before he broke the silence, “Looks like I underestimated you, but what do you intend to get out of this? If you give your life, I admit, you might take me with you. Do you hate me that much?”

Hei Bai cackled at him, their voices transferred through Spirit Sense and not sound, “Hahaha, not so high and mighty now, are you!? The only reason you’re still alive is because you became a Nascent Soul somehow.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m lucky. You already said that. Your lamentation doesn’t change the fact that it already happened and you can’t beat me like you imagined you could. Even if you sacrifice yourself, you aren’t guaranteed to take me down. So, do you have the guts to proceed down that path?”

She grumbled for a while, “Stupid beast. I want you to die, but I prefer living more. You’ve forced me into this state and I still can’t finish you off!”

“Yes, you’re angry and I’m a beast. Since you wish to live and don’t have a chance to beat me without sacrificing yourself… what shall we do now? Why don’t you just fly away? We won’t chase you.”

Hei Bai laughed, the red skull floated into the air and hovered over to the giant scorpion. She hovered just over its head and the orange glow of her fiery aura spread over it, “No thank you. I quite like this big body. You stole my collection of bones and broke the new one I collected earlier. I need a replacement. So, you leave, I won’t chase you.”

“Get away from my Uncle Zhuo!”

At that moment, Xiezi had picked herself up off the ground and shrieked at Hei Bai. Her left hand was hanging limply and she was holding her left shoulder with her right hand. Even so, she didn’t seem to care about the pain and was ferociously staring at the ghostly red skull. Sage of course agreed with her, “Get away from there and I’ll give you back the Rhino Seal.”

Right next to his huge cobra body, a pile of bones appeared. It was the skeleton of the Rhino Seal, one of the few he’d kept from Hei Bai’s collection as it was a valuable material for a Blacksmith. The other beast skeletons weren’t as valuable to a refiner, even if they were very useful for Hei Bai’s Yin Bone techniques. Sage didn’t care to practice that path so he’d sold most of the bones already.

Hei Bai looked at the bones with interest and then she cackled again, “Haha, I may not be able to beat you, but I will make you pay. This big bug is valuable to you, right? You can’t stop me from taking it. If you try I’ll just destroy it and we both lose!”

“Uncle Zhuo is not an IT! Get away from him now!”

“She’s right. I don’t care much about that scorpion, but it’s an important person to Xiezi. Right now the conflict is between the two of us. Do you want to gain the ire of the entire Chong Clan? Can you stand up against the might of a first rate power?”

The eyes of the red skull started to burn, but no beams came from them. Instead there was a harumph, “Fine, but I don’t trust you. Leave behind the Rhino Seal and also my Soul Locker. Then we will swap places, got it?”

Xiezi was about to rush forward, but Sage shook his head to her. This was basically a hostage transfer and he didn’t want Hei Bai to take the ‘money’ and kill the hostage. They went with one of the classic options: set the goods down and trade places. The most tense moment of course being the time they passed by each other. They both moved in an arc, keeping distance between them, but also not wanting to let the other steal both objects.

Thankfully, it seemed Hei Bai wanted the Soul Locker and Skeleton enough to stick to her side of the bargain. For all that Sage knew that Soul Locker only had a couple souls in it and even so they weren’t very exceptional. That meant there was more to it then he had thought.

Whatever, as long as we can get Uncle Zhuo back.