Spiritual force wrapped around his body and pulled him to the side. His body crashed to the ground and an instant later he finally shook off the disruption caused by the enemy’s attack and regained control of his body. He pushed himself up with his hands, then performed a lateral roll to the side, dodging over the next arrow that was coming his way. At this close range he could see the arrow leaving the bow, giving him the chance to track its entire flight path. Even though the arrows could change their trajectory in mid-air, he could now see it starting to turn and adjust accordingly.

When he could only see the arrows when they were about to hit him, he moved to avoid them, but the enemy seemed to be able to predict how he would dodge and the arrows were already turning towards where he moved. A high speed projectile like an arrow couldn’t just completely change its path at any time, but this archer had a way to manipulate the way they moved. It was like a baseball pitcher, throwing balls that flew straight and then suddenly dipped just in front of the plate. That said, complex pitches of that sort had to do with the physics of a sphere moving through the air with different rotational forces applied, while a bow and arrow worked on completely different principles. Sage could only chalk it up to the innumerable strange and marvelous techniques of this world. Either way, when he saw the arrow being launched he could see it tilting in mid-air or starting to twist rapidly. He suddenly had a much easier time avoiding them and so the enemy had brought out a surprise.

Sage recovered after that very close call, and dodged another pair of arrows before he darted behind the next closest tree. With that moment of cover, he performed the Soundshield technique and then took off running for the next tree to use as cover. Just as he left, the tree behind him was blasted into splinters. A section of the tree nearly ten feet tall was blasted out of the tree trunk, the wood chunks covering his back as he fled at high speed. The tree with the floor of a building chopped out of it fell downwards. The mangled upper portion fell rapidly, crashing into the ground and then slowly toppling to the side.

Moving rapidly, Sage used multiple movement techniques, combining the Falling Leaf Steps with Cosmic Traction. He even added an extra push with his Spirit Power and pushed his speed to the limit to avoid the arrows coming towards him. In the distance behind him came the sounds of constant explosions. Each of those arrows carried those array symbols that set off a detonation and the forest in the distance suffered for it.

While moving at high speed, Sage slapped a hand against one of the trees he passed by and sent a huge packet of energy into it. Then he opened his mouth and released a spray of sizzling green liquid. He increased the pressure so instead of a directed laminar flow or even a loose drizzle, it was turned into a thick mist. Driven by Divine Breath, it shot forth at high pressure, sweeping towards the archer. The continual flow was knocked off course by Sage twisting and flipping sideways to swim through the air over another arrow, but despite the distraction the flow was uninterrupted. Being pushed off aim like that caused the wave of poison to spread to a larger area, but the majority of the caustic green liquid rushed towards Jinxi Po.

For his part, the young master of the Jinxi Faction also opened his mouth and released one of those attacks that had been used on Sage during their first meeting. A wave of destructive sound rippled through the air and smashed up against the incoming wave of poison. Sage frowned when he saw that burst of noise impact against the Greenrose Venom in a manner visible to the naked eye. A sound of such potency that it could stop a high pressure mist in its tracks. The sight of such an event was absurd, let alone the implications of what sorts of supernatural powers were at play here.

The world around them hummed with power, the force of laws swirling and colliding against each other. Sage’s Law of Corruption clashed against the multiple laws that Jinxi Po was using. Sage already felt at least three different laws being used against him. He couldn’t stop to analyze their content as he was too busy tracking the incoming arrows and darting out of their way with increasingly complicated acrobatics. At this moment on the Inner World, his Soul Clone was focused on increasing his combat ability, pushing his processing power to an extreme level. For every second, the clone had nearly 12 minutes to think and plan. As a Nascent Soul, Foresight allowed him to peer 6 seconds into the future, which worked out to over an hour of time before what Sage saw as a possible future became reality. The Soul Clone tried out different acrobatic maneuvers, testing combinations with Cosmic Traction and the Falling Leaf Steps.

Every move Sage made was drastically different from the last, not following any patterns that his enemy could find a weakness in. He did everything he could to avoid Jinxi Po’s arrows while also closing the distance. The Golden Mantis Body constantly fluctuated, thinning and dimming to power his motion at one moment and then gaining strength in the next. Then, Sage resonated his Qi with that of the world and suddenly everything grew cold.

The whole forest of trees around them suddenly sprouted innumerable blue buds from their branches. Sage reached out with his Thermal Law at the same time as those buds started to bloom. The Blue Winter Lotus rapidly absorbed the heat from the air at an immense scale, plunging the whole forest to sub zero temperatures in an instant. It was like the coldest depths of winter had instantly fallen upon them. The sudden chill penetrated bone deep and Jinxi Po’s rhythm was disrupted.

Jinxi Po’s hand fell from his bow so he could smash his own fist against his chest. There was a low thump and he forcibly injected Qi into a part of his body that had been cut off from the rest by the cold. The young master showed his ferocity, smashing his fist against his own body a few more times to disrupt the coldness that had caused his meridians to be blocked in places. Sage had stumbled upon a rudimentary way to combine his two laws and the sudden change had caught Jinxi Po off guard.

Sage was very far from being able to use his laws in unison, but he’d found a way to chain them together. The Thermal Law he understood was related to the nature of heat, the way hot becomes cold and cold becomes hot. The motion of atoms and molecules. They collide with other molecules and their greater kinetic energy transfers to those molecules and creates ‘heat’. They continue to collide until they have the same amount of energy, creating a thermal equilibrium. Hot things radiate their heat, losing energy while giving it to everything around them until all parts of the system are roughly equal. Or at least that was the general way of things on Earth. It gave him insight into the Thermal Law, but it was far from a thorough understanding. Even so, he saw a connection between the idea of heat changing things from their original state, which also aligned with the Law of Corruption.

When Jinxi Po was rapidly plunged into that area of coldness, Sage enhanced the effect with his Thermal Law, coaxing more heat to leave the man’s body. Then, he used the Law of Corruption that was still swirling around the poisonous mist on the ground and turned it to the ‘cold energy’ in Jinxi Po’s body.

Unfortunately, this string of attacks didn’t get him the win he was hoping for. After smashing his fist against his own body a few times, Jinxi Po coughed up a mouthful of blood and then seemed to fly backwards, carried upon a large gust of wind. Just like that, the man retreated from Sage who was just about to reach a range close enough to put his mantis blade into effect.

“Ahh, who knew the Jinxi were such sore losers. I had taken you for a bunch of schemers, but I didn’t realize you were so devoid of honor.”