Sage shot forward, using his powerful physical body to clash with the huge body of the Broken Bronze Lionfish. The Silver Blackfish followed behind him and used the sharp edges of its silver fins as blades to attack. When the lionfish attacked towards him, Sage avoided the forty foot long sword fins, but when it attacked towards the Silver Blackfish, he moved in front of the fins and used his own forearm blades to block the attack. The Purple Mist Sect members spread out and didn’t attack unless the lionfish strayed towards them. They were doing the job of keeping the beast contained while Sage went head on against it. The Silver Blackfish darted out from behind him every so often to perform a powerful strike. The bronze-like hide of the lionfish was quite tough and a single slash from the Silver Blackfish was not enough to break its skin. Even so, by working together with Sage it coordinated its attacks to land upon the same spots.

The first hit only seemed to crumble the hide of the Broken Bronze Lionfish. The second formed a deep dent, and the third finally cracked it apart, allowing the fin of the Silver Blackfish to penetrate deep into the giant lionfish’s flesh. Sage continued to take hits from the lionfish, blocking with his blades created out of Poison Qi. Each time the beast struck him it grew weaker, attacked by the evolution of the poisonous purple miasma combined with the Greenrose Venom. The Purple Mist Sect still used the original poisonous miasma as the basis for their Poison Qi and focused on developing a heritage of poison laws. The Lang Clan, on the other hand, could merge and combine poisons because of their special bodies. After much testing, the Greenrose Venom became an integral part of their Poison Qi. The purple miasma had the qualities of a spiritual poison, not needing to be ingested, inhaled, or injected into a body, and it even ignored the toughness of skin or hide. As long as someone entered the miasma, the incorporeal power would affect their spirit, the feedback from which caused their organs to start failing.

The newer Greenrose Miasma was a similar spiritual medium, but it was infused with the perniciousness of the Greenrose Venom. A little touch of the Greenrose Venom would form green roses on the skin, draining vitality from the victim as the rose darkened in color and green lines formed like vines. The rose darkened to a black color and the new vines blossomed into new green roses. The blackened skin was necrotized and dead, using the energy to continue to grow and spread further. The Greenrose Miasma kept this vicious tenacity, but instead of necrotizing the flesh it targeted the soul just like the purple miasma. Once the soul was infected by them the green roses would continue to slowly spread and consume the victim’s soul. Of course, it wasn’t as terrifying as it sounded. While the Greenrose Miasma was extremely difficult to defend against and even harder to get rid of, it’s effect was slow.

Bluish-green colored Qi surrounded Sage’s body, the solidified energy acted like a powered exoskeleton, protecting him from harm while also boosting his physical strength and speed. The Jade Mantle used the Poison Qi from the Greenrose Miasma and had become the signature technique of the Lang Clan. It only took a few clashes for an opponent to get infected by this spiritual poison and suffer for a long time afterwards. With focused effort it was possible to expel the poisonous Qi from the soul, but it took many hours or days to do so which made it a powerful weapon of attrition.

The giant lionfish was not quite smart enough to realize that it was being poisoned everytime it attacked Sage. It was far more concerned with the deep cuts that the Silver Blackfish was inflicting upon it. More blood spilled into the water from its wounds and the lionfish got weaker and weaker from the combined effects of the poison and blood loss. Yet, weak as it got, its ferociousness never dissipated. The more the lionfish was injured the more reckless and vicious its attacks became. Instead of trying to avoid or even block attacks, it would always choose to take a new wound in order to ensure it lands a hit upon its attacker.

As the fight wore on, Sage took some wounds and was bleeding from many places on his body. The Silver Blackfish on the other hand seemed to infuriate the lionfish because the wounds on its body rapidly healed. It was inflicting so many wounds on the lionfish and yet it didn’t even have to pay the price. Soon enough, its suicidal tendencies took over and the Broken Bronze Lionfish let Sage stab its eye so it could complete a lunge that swallowed the inverse colored orca right into its mouth. The Silver Blackfish was more than three times larger than Sage, but it was only half the size of the lionfish’s sword-like fins, let alone its huge head and mouth. The huge beast swallowed the blackfish with one gulp while Sage controlled his Qi to elongate his forearm blade. He used his other hand to push upon his wrist and stab the blade deeper into the lionfish’s eye. Then the Qi blade on his arm snapped off while he turned and swam away rapidly. The blade of Qi didn’t dissipate, remaining a solid construct lodged in the lionfish’s eye and infecting it with more poison.

The Broken Bronze Lionfish was a suicidal risk taker, and most would choose not to play its game of trading wounds given its tough hide and sharp blades. The notes that Sage had read about it in the past mentioned it thrived on intimidation. Even things that were more powerful than it wouldn’t bother to fight it because they’d always receive wounds in the process which might make them vulnerable to other predators. Yet, as fierce as it was, it was still a fish and fish weren’t known for their intelligence. All Demonic Beasts gained intelligence as they grew more powerful, but with such a low starting point Demonic Fish were never known for their wisdom. A few seconds after the lionfish swallowed the Silver Blackfish it felt something was wrong and started to thrash around, but Sage and the Purple Mist Sect members had already backed far away.

With a final vicious slapping of its tail, the Broken Bronze Lionfish came to a sudden stop. Its immense body, bleeding from tens of wounds, was motionless. Its whole body seemed frozen in place except for two parts. Its one good eye was swirling around madly while the ‘small’ fins, the size of doors, that covered its gills were slowly sweeping back and forth. Sage swam back over to the huge beast and his Spirit Power swelled outwards, wrapping around the huge lionfish and then pulling it into the Inner World where it was thrown into a lake. In comparison to its huge body, the lake was akin to a prison, giving it barely enough room to pace around. Once there, the Soul Clone extracted the Silver Blackfish from its mouth and fed it healing pills, including the Clan’s antidote for the Greenrose Miasma. One of the benefits of using a few poisons over a long period was being able to develop antidotes so that accidents could be easily resolved.

Along with the Silver Blackfish, Sage extracted hundreds of gallons of a deep red liquid that was too viscous to be blood from the lionfish’s stomach. Lastly, he gave the lionfish another set of pills, the antidote for the poison that had won him the fight: Ruby Blood.