More of the infected moaned in pain. At this point, I was certain that ‌all of these people were still alive!

Spear That Weaves took out his bottle of trick pills and flicked a few of them at the edge of the continuously growing zombie horde.

The pills crashed into the infected, exploded into clouds of gold, and surrounded the bodies.

The pink vines that wrapped around limp limbs darkened and shriveled.

They became unconscious and collapsed to the ground. Their zombie buddies stepped over them to keep coming at us.

Wait. The amount of people kept increasing, pouring out of buildings and side alleys. The demonic cultivator must be desperate for more energy and was trying to use them as a distraction to prevent us from getting to the Life Gate.

“Seniors! We can’t waste time here.” Spear That Weaves said. “I can handle these with the trick pills and my weapon. Please go on ahead!”

Clear Eyes Mad Tongue nodded and jumped onto the plastered stone wall that separated a line of houses from the street. To keep moving, he ran forward while kicking away any of the vine-covered hands that attempted to grab his feet.

Little Spring followed after him.

I briefly squeezed Spear That Weaves’ shoulder. “Don’t get overrun. Retreat is always an option.”

“Yes, Senior Lin!” He threw another pill at the horde and I handed him back the bottle he gave me. He needed it more than I would. And in the worst-case scenario, Little Spring still had his.

As I jumped onto the top of the wall and started running, I called back, “Also, don’t die!”

He looked exasperated. “Don’t curse me!”

He’d be fine. Probably.

Okay, I couldn’t help but worry about him, since he was only a few years older than my current body. Still, we didn’t have time to deal with these vine zombies. But we also couldn’t let them attack us from the back while we dealt with the monster guarding the gate.

They didn’t have any cultivation. If he wasn’t able to take them down, then I would doubt the vision of my sect’s most honored Spear Grandmaster.

Using an Impossible Leap, I quickly caught up to Clear Eyes and Little Spring.

The fog had thickened to ‌where we could only see twenty feet in front of us.

We came to a large intersection. A massive Vine Wyvern, four times the size of the first one, stretched its wings threateningly.

As it moved, the sound of a hundred squeaky doors echoed through the intersection. Which was, apparently, what it sounded like when thick vines rubbed against each other.

The eerie glowing pink dots inside its triangle eye sockets focused on us.

If we came any closer, it would definitely start attacking.

And we had to fight this fucker to get at the flag that it stood on top of.

Mad Tongue pulled out his sword, then glanced at us.

He had a half-crazed expression — like he wasn’t sure that he could defeat it but was going to try anyway.

“Do you think its size matters?”

I looked him right in his eyes and very seriously said, “Yes. Yes, it does.”

If we were in a Manhua version of this universe, then black lines would have darkened his forehead.

I grinned. “Listen up. If you’re dealing with giant creatures, they’ll have a larger mass. And that means that they’ll have more power behind their attacks. However, without an increased realm, they will also move slower to start out. It will take them more time to turn. Use that against them.”

Little Spring nodded.

Clear Eyes looked like he had calmed down.

“Come on.” I pointed my sword at the entity. “This vine monster isn’t going to kill itself, and we only have ten minutes.”

“We have to stop this thing in that short amount of time?!”

“That’s right. You only have a short amount of time to kill it.”

He opened his mouth.

“You can do it!” I encouraged.

“I believe in you!” Little Spring added.

“Hey! Don’t act like I’m the only one who’s going to fight this giant monster!”

I gestured to myself and my junior brother. “We’ll make sure you aren’t attacked from the side so you can better strike its weak point.”

“We can watch your back too!” the kid said. “It will be a nightmare if those infected people run over here and get in the way of your fight.”

“I also need to keep in touch with the other team to make sure they’re killing off their vine wyvern, too.”

“Their what?”

“I can’t simultaneously beat this monster and keep track of the other group of cultivators at my current realm.”

Clear Eyes Mad Tongue grimaced. That crazed look started to reappear on his face again.

It must be hard accepting the fact that he was in the main fighting position while his ‘seniors’ were merely defending his ass from random attacks. But that was reality.

Annoyed with our stalling, the wyvern lowered its head. A line of pink saliva flowed from the not-mouth on its wood-like mask and landed on the ground.

Where the liquid hit, a barrier of thorny vine bushes sprouted. A large defensive wall protecting its weak spot now stood between us and it.

It taunted our group by silently roaring.

“Tch.” Mad Tongue grimaced. “I should have attacked it earlier.”

And I should talk to his master about renaming him to Daoist Hindsight.

Clear Eyes sent a slash toward the wall. It broke up then, due to the relentless pink saliva, it regrew within moments. Then he started to run towards it.

While spreading out my divine sense, I split my mind into three and simultaneously watched each fight.

***

Spear That Weaves darted in and out of the mass of vine zombies close to where we left him.

He threw pill after pill at the shuffling crowd. The medicinal dust that hit the figures stopped them and caused each body to fall to the road.

The young cultivator was doing very well for being overwhelmingly outnumbered

When a couple of infected came too close, he used his spear to push them back. Then he flicked another two doses from the jade bottle to crash onto their chests.

The zombies collapsed.

The horde stepped over them and continued their push towards the Spear that Weaves.

In the blink of an eye, he took out a dozen more by filling an area with pill dust and having them chase him through it.

Unfortunately, there were just way too many people, and the pills he’d brought weren’t enough to get them all.

The infected, whose numbers constantly increased, started to surround him.

A vine-covered hand pulled at his robes.

He kicked the zombie away.

Another attempted to claw at his arm with the sharp pink thorns. He ducked and dodged.

His situation wasn’t looking good at all. I was half tempted to go back and help him.

Then, Spear That Weaves tossed the last of his trick pills.

***

In the other team, Incapacitating Wind and the alchemists under her threw trick pills at a crowd of zombies that must have attacked them once they reached their wyvern.

I really should have looked at this team more while we were on our way over. Whatever, they were doing fine.

Also, maybe it was the demonic fog getting in the way of my divine sense, but it seemed like their demonic vine wyvern looked more like a demonic vine duck.

Swift Dove sent a barrage of waterfall-like sword Qi strikes at the monster.

Roots burst up from the cracked road and attempted to attack her from behind.

Drunken Edge jumped between her and those sneak attacks. He fought them off while swerving wildly. Frankly, his movements made me think that he was actually intoxicated.

It was worrying and made me wonder if someone had purposefully taught him the wrong stances.

The one good thing about his movements was that he dodged out of the way just before any tricky root could hit him. He then sliced the roots inches above the ground.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of them. More grew out of different holes and surrounded the man. He had to double his efforts to defend both himself and Swift Dove’s back.

Of course, while their vine entity was not as large as ours, that didn’t mean that it didn’t have its own abilities.

It used its wings to grab a couple of glowing pink tumbleweeds that had been rolling around and threw them at Drunken Edge.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough space to dodge both the roots and the vine cannonballs.

Shit!

***

Little Spring and I stood side by side in ready stances while Clear Eyes Mad Tongue darted around the monster using his movement technique.

Every time the teen paused to change directions, he’d throw a beautiful blade of sword Qi at a different part of the wyvern. He was trying to find the places it paid the least attention to so he could use that against it later.

Suddenly, demonic vine roots burst from the ground near us. They shot toward the teen.

I swung my sword in a physical attack, cutting them off at their base mere feet before they could pierce Clear Eyes’ back.

Little Spring followed up by stabbing his blade into the ground, where they’d popped up. Then he sent a blast of Qi in to slice the roots further down while collapsing the dirt around them.

This must have pissed the wyvern off because it flapped its wings. Blades of air sliced toward us.

I grabbed a defensive talisman from my spatial ring and used it as a barrier between us and the attack.

Because the talisman wasn’t supposed to be used this way, it quickly burnt out. A blast of the remaining wind pushed us back several feet.

That was not supposed to happen. That meant that it was stronger than I’d originally estimated.

How the fuck were we going to kill it in time?

***

Being surrounded and in a bad position didn’t mean that Spear That Weaves Through Lightning was out of commission just yet.

He swung his weapon and swept the zombies’ legs out from under them.

Of course, most of them just stood up again, but a few ended up in a heap, as if cuddling.

After several more clever attacks, a literal pile of vine zombies started to grow and connect. Their vines braided together like rope and grew stronger.

They’d soon combined enough that a mesh of knocked-out people had turned into a giant snake. There was even a child sticking out of the snake’s tail.

What the fuck?!

Fortunately, the fog affected my divine sense enough to blur most of the details or the sheer weirdness of it might have distracted me from the other fights.

Spear That Weaves looked up at the snake and stood in a stance like he was about to take it on.

::It’s okay to run if you need to!::

::Senior Lin. I got this!::

Just as the snake of zombies reared its head to attack the young man, he thrust his spear forward. Lightning — well, maybe it was closer to electricity — zigzagged out of his weapon’s tip and tasered the shit out of the snake.

Smoke rose from the collapsed mass.

The vines might not burn, but they definitely weren’t taser-proof.

Well, fuck. That was an interesting technique! He must have comprehended it when he dodged all those talisman attacks in the finals.

It also explained his full name.

And somehow, the lightning left the people relatively uninjured and only damaged the vines. Of course, since these demonic plants were a mix between a disease and a parasite, I knew that these infected weren’t cured just because of a little electricity.

***

To the other team I sent, ::Someone protect Drunken Edge!::

Incapacitating Wind had just finished her fight with a zombie. When she heard my telepathic message she looked toward her fellow sect member to see that his ass was about to get entangled by tumbleweeds.

She didn’t hesitate and threw out her weaponized cauldron spiritual tool.

It zipped through the air at the vine cannonballs hurtling toward Drunken Edge.

The tool and the glowing pink balls collided at just the right angle that — instead of bursting apart — the evil weeds bounced back to where the duck smugly bobbed its wood-like bill.

One ball smacked its face, causing it to stare at my fellow sect members like it couldn’t believe they had the audacity to do that.

Apparently, the vine duck disliked it so much that it waddled its massive body away from the place it was guarding and loomed above the sword cultivators ready to smash them with its wings.

Unfortunately for it, Swift Dove used this opportunity to strike at its weak spot — the base where its roots connected to the main plant.

An icy sword technique burst from her white blade. It both sliced and froze the area around it. The vine duck went from hot pink to cold tundra in a matter of moments.

Yes! They did it. Now they just needed to find the Death Gate.

***

I watched as root after root burst up from the ground, always from different directions. Little Spring and I worked together to chop them up.

Unfortunately, this was getting us nowhere. We didn’t have the time anymore since we’d already wasted minutes just trying to keep ourselves and Clear Eyes alive.

Considering the giant wyvern’s strength, it looked like I’d have to step in with some big moves. I’d have to ‌cast something at the Foundation Establishment level. Of course, the reason I’d been avoiding that was because of the horrible backlash I’d suffer.

Let’s see, lightning seemed to work well against these plants. While it didn’t seem to kill them off entirely, it did appear to have a debilitating effect.

That left only one technique I knew of that I could currently cast. The Three Fires Phoenix Energy Technique.

It was something I’d picked up on a whim in my last life and never mastered before outgrowing it.

I turned to the Wyvern, readying myself to run towards it. And that was when I noticed it raising its wings high into the air, all while staring hatefully at Little Spring.

It flapped both wings. Thick air blades shot toward my junior brother. Then they melded together and rotated to make one thick blade that could blow apart several houses.

Since he was focusing on slicing up the attacking roots, he wasn’t paying attention to the wyvern. But even if he did, I didn’t think he had anything on him that could take care of an attack like that.