This was the Chong Clan so there were many among the crowd who were able to clear up some of the confusion, “Golden Crickets can create illusions and mess with people’s heads. To think that the Patriarch was so powerful that he could make the whole crowd see night instead of day.”

As the match proceeded, there were many that stopped referring to the old man as the ‘Jinxi Patriarch’ and simply called him ‘Patriarch’. There was always a division of the factions in the Chong Clan, and just because he led the Jinxi Faction didn’t mean they saw him as their own highest authority. Yet, this battle that showed off his strength was already enough to start convincing many of the Clan members that weren’t very invested in their own factions. The Jinxi Patriarch was smiling inwardly and thinking he should have shown off his strength more often. He was already thinking it was actually quite easy to get the support of the lower echelons of the clan. They might be disgruntled with their immediate superiors that made them work for their benefits, but he was so high above them that they were happy to look up and be impressed by him.

The chirping sounds got louder and louder, but no one in the audience felt anything off. Yet, they could also see the, now dense, leaves of the trees start to sway. The chaotic sounds of many crickets chirping started to slowly align. As their cries overlapped it created a louder and louder sound, one that made even the trunks of the trees start to sway. Each time the chirp rang out, many leaves were knocked loose from the trees.

Even so, the two combatants were still standing motionlessly. The old man’s lips were pursed, but the sound didn’t seem to come from him, but from the large field of grass where it seemed like countless crickets were hidden. Across from him, Sage seemed to still be breathing heavily, tired from his flurry of attacks and also from creating a forest of trees out of thin air. The unified chirp got louder and louder, and the trees were a perfect gauge for the audience to watch as the sound was slowly dialed in. With each chirp they felt that the sound started to get quieter, but they could also see that the trees suffered more. After a few more chirps they saw that the trees to the edges had calmed while those in the center were shaken harder. The sound wave was being concentrated, each burst focusing more force onto the place where the Lang branch head was standing while reducing the effect everywhere else.

After a dozen more chirps the sound wave was blasting a trench into the ground in line directly between the patriarch and branch head. The trees to either side of that path shuddered and cracked, toppling to the sides from the force of that immense pressure wave. The sounds that the Jinxi Patriarch were creating had transcended from mere sounds to the level of explosive pressure waves. That explosive blast ripped through the trees and then splashed around the branch head like water against rocks. It rippled to either side, losing its concentration and smashing against the trees to either side of the branch head. They swayed back and forth, smaller cracks were heard as whole limbs were sheared from them and hundreds of leaves were knocked loose, falling slowly to the ground behind him.

As impressive as this whole thing looked, Sage was not really impressed. His own Divine Breath was much more powerful than this attack the old man was sending at him. Sage’s Soundshield handled this attack pretty easily as it was basically on the same level as the one that Jinxi Po had sent at him in the council meeting. In fact, the damaging pressure wave was not even the true attack. Most in the crowd were impressed by the flashy attack, but the Elders and the other strong people in the crowd were already defending themselves against the Jinxi Patriarch’s true attack. The fact that day had turned to night and grass had grown everywhere were the signs of the real assault. The old man was using some sort of hypnotic law along with some sort of sub-layer of sound that a normal human wouldn’t even realize they were listening to. That special sound sunk deep into the mind and gave him a medium to control the senses.

The tall grass, the chirping crickets, and the starry night above were all illusions conjured up by the Jinxi Patriarch. The explosive pressure waves he attacked with now were intended to draw attention away from the illusions he’d conjured and make an opponent forget about the illusions that were trying to drill deeper into their brains. Someone that fell into an illusion would try to clear their senses and fight to free themselves from the foreign influence. By immediately making legitimate physical attacks the old man’s opponents would either think they were also an illusion and suffer greatly, or they might even start to think that because the pressure wave was real then perhaps all they saw earlier was also real.

Quite cunning. Layering illusions and reality together.

It was too bad for the Jinxi Patriarch that Sage had such a good defense against sound based attacks. The pressure waves blasted apart a layer of his Soundshield, and he was knocked back a step, but then he created another. Two layers of Qi formed around him and then he expanded the outer one, forming a layer of vacuum between them. The hidden attack was not stopped by his Soundshield, but it was impeded. The old man used the sound as a medium to hide and carry his Qi. The Soundshield stopped the sound but the Qi continued on and crashed into his Spiritual Sea.

It was too bad that the Jinxi Patriarch had no idea that Sage had received training against mental attacks. The old man’s attacks entered Sage’s Spiritual Sea and they shot towards his mind, only to be repelled by the thick walls of his Infinite Immaterial Seat. The old man attacked again and again, but his attacks merely crashed against the walls ineffectively.

In the outside world, Sage was driven back a few steps by each of the explosive pressure waves, but he continued to form new layers for his Soundshield. The powerful force caused the thin layer of Qi to burst, but then the sound attack was dispersed by the changes in air density. Everyone in the crowd continued to be impressed by their Clan leader. The forest was being ripped apart and the branch head driven back step by step. He was driven back by the explosive waves and the trees around him creaked and shuddered.

Then, the Patriarch released a succession of rapid attacks and the many layers of Sage’s Soundshield burst apart faster than he could restore them. He was struck directly by the attack and flew backwards. The trees next to that ground zero were blasted down while Sage’s body was carried through the trunk of another, causing a sudden felling of a half-dozen giant trees at the same time. The boughs and leaves creaked and brushed against each other as those huge trees fell over. The trees were all connected by the same large branches so it was more difficult to fell them, but with their trunks damaged to such an extent they still toppled down and took many of the large interconnected branches with them.

The branch head had fallen into a giant pile of underbrush, disappearing from view while the Jinxi Patriarch was now the one breathing hard. He was still standing in that field of tall grass, but he was no longer whistling, that rapid attack had finally caused his perfect facade to fade.