He wasn’t sure if the Swamp Genesis Spider could even understand the words he was saying, but the way that Soul Resonance connected them meant they still had an innate understanding of one another. Even if they couldn’t communicate directly, they could still glean each other’s meaning by just a few looks and gestures. The two of them knew this was not a good situation, but they weren’t going to go down without a fight.

The ground started to rumble again, which they could see was caused by the rocking motion of the Living Disaster. Flipped onto its back, the tortoise was not in a good position, but it wasn’t stuck like that. Contrary to what some might believe, a tortoise could flip itself back over. It swung its legs in unison, first to the left, and then back to the right, using its body weight to rock back and forth. Such a gigantic object rolling back and forth atop the ground caused a miniature earthquake yet again. It also ensured that everything on its back was ruined. The ‘shell’ of the tortoise was made of hard stone, but there were many layers of soil, softer rocks, and bits of glowing magma that were thrown loose from the motion. A crater formed because of its movement and the tortoise had to roll about for a while compacting the earth underneath it before it could get the proper momentum to flip back over.

While the Living Disaster struggled to right itself, the Swamp Genesis Spider was taking on a trio of Nascent Souls. There was the man in the black half mask, his face covered from the nose down. The Fu Clan, that group of assassins which had a rivalry with the Chong Clan. His feet barely seemed to touch the water, tip-toeing across the surface while covered in a shroud of pitch black smoke. He tilted forward at the waist while he ran, with his arms stretched out behind himself instead of pumping them along with his legs. Black smoke billowed around him, condensing thickly at his back, it looked like he was running at the very edge of a dense fog bank. That, or he was reaching back into the smoke and pulling it along behind him.

The masked man approached from the right, creating a wall of dark smoke on one side of the battlefield. In the center, the Living Disaster was causing a huge ruckus, tossing dirt and debris everywhere. To the left, were the other two Nascent Souls. They were both from the Artful Life Alliance, but from different internal factions. Sage wasn’t very familiar with all the member factions, but he did know the Artful Life Alliance was made up of many smaller clans and sects. They didn’t own their own province, so they weren’t officially a first rate power, but by pooling their strength they had about the same strength as one of the first rate powers. Unlike the Hatchet Gang, they didn’t do this to keep mortals from being bullied, but to ensure their own benefits.

The woman with her hair pulled back in a bun stomped on the water, causing it to ripple away from her. She moved towards the Swamp Genesis Spider with big bounding leaps, everytime she pushed off the water there was a deep booming sound. She moved directly towards the spider and made such noise that the Swamp Genesis Spider focused on her first. More water was drawn up through its limbs and then spurted from its mouth. The massive water cannon directed at the, comparatively, tiny woman while she was in mid-air. She didn’t seem to mind, and swung her arms forward, clapping her hands together. Her whole body rippled and a thunderous shockwave was blasted forward from her hands. Even the air seemed to ripple from the deep booming sound she released. The jet of water looked like a trickle of water poured onto a fan, the pressurized stream was dispersed into a harmless shower of tiny droplets.

While her forward progress was stopped by the huge spray of water, the third Nascent Soul dashed out from behind her. The swordsman with the piercing eyes was not touching the water of the swamp. He flitted from tree to tree, kicking off them without the trees showing any disturbance. He circled around to the side of the spider, closing the distance without making any attempts at attacking from a distance.

To the right, the Fu Clansman covered in smoke threw one of his hands forward and the black smoke rushed in front of him. A square shaped outline formed in the smoke, with darkness billowing around it. It looked much like a locomotive rushing through a bank of black smoke, which Sage thought was a ridiculous idea, because none of these people would know what such a thing was. Having already fired a water burst at the woman, the Swamp Genesis Spider was forced to confront this smoke train with one of its legs. The inverted spire of a leg lifted and dropped rapidly, stabbing down at the front of the smoke with its pointed ‘toe’. The smoke burst apart, like a wave crashing against the rocks, the sharp point of the spider’s leg pierced the dark cloud and caused it to lose cohesion.

With the diversion from two sides, the swordsman was able to close the distance and leap towards the spider from the left side. The man had jumped and leapt through the many trees in the swamp without once using his hands, always keeping them on the sword on his left hip, one hand on the hilt and the other on the scabbard. At this moment when he finally came into contact with the spider, his hands finally moved and there was only the barest whisper of a sound. Like a hand brushing against a piece of paper, and then the succinct clink of metal to wood. The sword was already back in its sheath and the man fell into the mucky water of the swamp.

The spider saw the man approaching at the last moment and tried to move its leg to knock the swordsman away, but then it released a loud screech. As it did, a viscous liquid shot out of its leg from a huge gash that suddenly formed. A crack nearly forty feet long and a foot wide had been sliced into the spider’s leg. It was spurting the creature’s bodily fluids, hemolymph, which was equivalent to their blood and screeching with pain from the sudden strike. As thick and powerful as the monster’s exoskeleton was, it was still split open so easily by the swordsman. On the plus side, because of its size, the forty foot long crack was like a normal person having a 2 inch long cut. The spider couldn’t ignore the wound, but it was far from life threatening.

Sage was surprised by how powerful that man’s sword was. He figured they would have to beat on the spider for quite a while before they could possibly pierce its armored body. Sage was currently beneath the Swamp Genesis Spider and using it as a distraction to buy some time. The tortoise was going to join the battle sooner or later and the spider couldn’t do all the work on its own. Outnumbered as they were, they didn’t have much of a chance, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.

While the spider held back the three Nascent Souls, Sage put his energy into a technique he hadn’t used in some time. One of the few Qi Techniques he’d ever learned, Sage was pouring power into a mass of vines. Vines that were twining around the broken lower trunk of a tree and using it as a scaffold to grow into a tree of their own. The vines hardened and combined together, forming a new trunk and spreading a canopy of branches outwards. Leaves sprouted from the branches and new vines fell to the ground. A single vine became many and they dug into the ground and grew roots. The vines hardened and combined to form a new tree trunk and spread branches of their own. One tree became many. A singular gigantic canopy of branches and leaves, yet with many trunks and sets of roots.

The Sacred Banyan.