The mental attack that the Jinxi Patriarch had sent his way smashed ineffectively against the walls of a fortress. Unlike others without any mental cultivation, there was an island at the center of Sage’s Spiritual Sea. Not only that, but upon that island there was a large fortress. A fortress with two huge gates that rattled whenever the wave of energy knocked against the walls. The old man’s Qi wasn’t immediately dispelled after crashing against the walls of the fortress. There was a hint of the old man’s will, keeping the energy from dissipating. As he continued to create attacks in the outside world, more and more of his Qi was carried on the sound and penetrated into Sage’s Spiritual Sea.

Even so, the Jinxi Patriarch finally had to stop. Each time the attack struck the walls of his fortress it lost some of its energy. It didn’t break apart completely, but it was still weakened. After the patriarch maintained his attack for nearly ten minutes he finally had to call it to a halt. The strand of will finally faded and most of the patriarch’s Qi reserves were expended. Of course, at their rank neither of them would ever be able to run out of Qi entirely, but they had to take a break so their reserves could have time to recover.

At least that was why the Jinxi Patriarch stopped. Opposite from him, Sage was only faking weakness. If he wanted to, he could resist the attacks without taking any steps back and he was far from as tired as he was making it seem. He was following his plan of luring the Patriarch to underestimate him. There was also the fact that he’d never really fought on a stage in front of so many people and he couldn’t help but want to give the people a good show. When the final pressure wave struck him, he skidded backwards a couple steps.

He purposefully didn’t restore his Soundshield to full strength and took a few hard hits, enough so that he could suffer a bit of an internal injury. As a user of sound based attacks, the Jinxi Patriarch was one of the more uncommon cultivators that used attacks targeting the internal organs. Qi was actually very good at penetrating the outer layers of the body to attack the internal organs, but most people found it far flashier to make giant energy blades, throw fireballs, or any number of other physically destructive techniques.

Sliding to a stop Sage reached up and wiped the blood from the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he spit blood onto the ground at his side and recovered his stance. He raised his head and started to stare over at the old man who’d injured him. He did his best to maintain a look of defiance. He wanted to make it look like he was trying his hardest to fight against someone much stronger.

The Jinxi Patriarch was glaring back at him. After his mental attack had finally run out of steam he realized that this new branch head was stronger than he thought. People that had developed mental defenses were few and far between. They were only slightly more common than people who actually practiced mental attacks. The only thing more rare than true mental cultivators were soul cultivators. Even Body Cultivators were slightly more popular than mental cultivators, and that was only because the requirements to become a body cultivator were easier to fulfill. The old man was surprised that this upstart had stumbled upon such a technique. Even he as the Clan Leader couldn’t even be considered a true mental cultivator. His Jinxi Faction had been constantly improving a set of techniques that had been passed down in their faction for thousands of years. Yet without any method of true mental cultivation, they couldn’t be considered actual mental cultivators. Without any way to reliably improve their mental strength they could never meet the standard. Instead, the Jinxi Faction was forced to rely on consumable resources. It was like a cultivator that could only improve through consuming pills, were they really a cultivator and not just a drug addict?

At that moment, the old man decided he wasn’t going to kill this upstart branch head, but he was definitely going to come up with an excuse to imprison him so that he could pry out his secrets. All he had to do was get the kid to bring out a weapon or force him to swallow a pill. A smile suddenly crawled onto the old man’s face and he wet his lips.

Sage was slightly creeped out by the old man wetting his lips with a ferocious look on his face. It was very disconcerting to see an old tongue slathering saliva onto wrinkled lips. Even grossed out as he was, he didn’t let it distract him and focused on sending his energy down into his foot and into the root he was standing on. The Jinxi Patriarch finished his gross gesture and started to whistle again, the sharp trill changing almost instantly into a slow chirping. It looked like the man was whistling, but all he heard was crickets chirping. Even though the mental attack couldn’t harm him directly, as soon as the energy entered his Spiritual Sea he could feel it messing with his senses. He could easily tell the real from the fake, like it was nothing but a hologram, but he was still able to see what the patriarch wanted him to see, slightly at least. That was why he still saw that it was daytime and the stage was bare stone, not knee high and filled with crickets.

It was also what let him properly react to what the Jinxi Patriarch was doing. He wanted to give the man a false sense of security, so it wouldn’t be good if he completely ignored the illusions. It was much better to make the old man waste his time and effort concocting illusions and sneaky tricks.

From the audience’s perspective they saw the Jinxi Patriarch looking tired for the first time. They saw the branch head resisting with a defiant look on his face, but they all felt that he was nearing his limits already. The patriarch looked tired, but the branch head was already spitting up blood. After catching his breath for a minute the patriarch stood up straight and a brilliant golden sphere appeared in the sky above him. It glowed brightly like a star, shimmering and hard to look at. Then the golden sphere grew larger and larger, growing from three feet wide to thirty feet wide in just a few seconds. Then there was a loud pop and the bright light exploded, momentarily blinding everyone. When their vision cleared, a gigantic golden cricket appeared standing in front of the Jinxi Patriarch. The thirty foot tall cricket was of a similar color and appearance as Sage’s Golden Mantis Body, yet it was so much larger.

“How could the branch head have a chance against such a monstrously big cricket?”

There were also many old timers in the audience that were quick to refute them, “You think that crickets big? In the old days, that thing would just be a little baby compared to the Lang Clan’s Colossal Iron Mantis.”

“You always say stuff like that! How big was your fish old man?”

Such isolated antics were completely outside of Sage’s perception or attention at this point. Instead he looked up at the giant cricket and then back down to the old man. The Jinxi Patriarch leapt to the side avoiding a trio of sharp roots that shot straight out of the ground like spears. Then a pink gas spread from the root and caught the old man. Seeing the gas, the Jinxi Patriarch held his breath and took a half dozen steps to the side. The arm that the pink gas had touched was already starting to go numb and the old man felt Sage’s powerful Law energy clinging to him.