After taking such a hard hit from the giant sea turtle, Sage could feel the worst of the damage to his internal organs already in the process of repairing themselves, but his enhanced healing was not very quick. It was an ability taken from a somewhat weak creature and he didn’t put a great focus upon it when he was making the Jade Sky Mantis. It was important to have this ability to recover in an emergency, but even if there weren’t any other abilities it still wouldn’t be able to heal that rapidly. Instead of healing a wound in minutes it was better to just have the capability to end a fight immediately. When taken to the extreme, faster healing would just end up like those worms, sure they can grow a new body out of their two halves, but they usually are just flopping around looking for something to bite. The opportunity cost is just too high.

The poison that the sea turtle swam into was Greenrose Miasma, the poison that had become the backbone of the Lang Clan and was used as their innate Poison Qi. It was the basic medium to which other poisons could be added and as Poison Qi it wasn’t just a poison but a power source that could be used to perform Qi Techniques. He dumped out all of his Poison Qi to lay this set of traps for the sea turtle so it would take him some time to recover it. The core of a cultivator would automatically absorb the energy of the world around them and convert it into Qi for them to use, and Sage had already merged that core into his Nascent Soul long ago so there was no worry about running out. It was merely a question of time. Poison Qi was highly concentrated and virulent, and it was only a secondary Qi system for him. These limitations meant his supply of Poison Qi was small in quantity and also slow to recover.

One of the reasons that the Jade Mantle had become so important for the Lang Clan was precisely because of these limitations. The Jade Mantle lets them move their Poison Qi outside of the body, emptying out their Poison Qi reserves so that more of it would be produced. At the same time the highly condensed Poison Qi was a very dense fuel to power the Jade Mantle. Not only did those attacking them or attacked by them get exposed to Poison Qi, the highly concentrated Qi was very good when ‘burned’ to enhance their physical abilities. As long as they didn’t mind walking around with a Jade Mantle active all the time, they could also have a reserve of Poison Qi to use for other purposes. The only real downside was that once it was burned up or destroyed it was not something that could be easily restored in combat.

Usually, this wasn’t a very big downside, but Sage was using the Jade Mantle to form his swim fins. As soon as his Jade Mantle was destroyed he lost a lot of his swimming speed. In this disaster, a team of researchers were already learning and training with the Golden Mantis Body, the technique of the original Lang Clan that the Jade Mantle was derived from. The Jade Mantle was created to be easier for their mantis bodies to perform, utilizing their Poison Qi and also improved to allow different shape transformations. They were quickly working to make the changes to the old technique so he could use it with his normal Qi to form fins.

Sage swam away rapidly, but the power of his limbs was just too great and even when making wide and powerful swimming motions there was only so much surface area on his limbs. It was like trying to paddle a canoe with a broomstick instead of a proper paddle or oar. In order to get the same speed he’d have to move faster, but there was a limit to how quickly he could move. In this way, swimming without the fins felt like being on the lowest gear on a bicycle. With his current strength the water gave him barely any resistance, but even when he was moving his limbs at maximum speed he still felt like he was moving slowly.

The swimming techniques from the Violent Sun Sect were definitely far more suited to the body of a Cultivator than normal mortal swimming skills, but it was still far from Sage’s top speed. The sea turtle had already been able to catch up to him when he was at his peak so it was going to come down to who had been more harmed by the change in circumstances. Sage had lost his Jade Mantle and suffered a huge speed reduction while the sea turtle had swam right into a huge cloud of his Greenrose Miasma. This poison was spiritual in nature so it wasn’t diluted by the water, nor did it require the sea turtle to be injured or to ingest it. Instead, as long as the miasma got close enough it could affect a person’s soul. The damage to their soul would cause a corrosive effect to their organs. Harming the spirit to affect the body. As a derivation of the Greenrose Venom, it has similar drawbacks. The Greenrose Miasma requires time to take effect, but it will continue to spread, continually tainting their spirit and rotting their body. That is, unless they can suppress it. Usually, even a person a whole rank lower than the originator can suppress Greenrose Miasma, but this requires a significant expenditure of Qi and concentration. It’s no simple feat to suppress such a powerful poison while also being locked in battle with the one who gave it to you.

Unfortunately, Sage’s opponent this time was a giant sea turtle and not a normal cultivator. He had no idea how its immense size and power would match up against the Greenrose Miasma. Unlike the obvious immensity of its body, Sage had no way to see how powerful its soul was. Even if he’d experienced the beast’s memories, the sea turtle was no soul cultivator. There were never any examples of a conflict of that type so there was no telling how powerful it was in advance. Sage swam down near the rocks and coral, using them as hand and footholds to push off of and help to increase his speed. Sand was kicked up into a mess and more than a few times he kicked a rock to bits as he pushed off of it, but he didn’t dare to slow down for an instant. Even this wasn’t enough though as he looked back to see the giant creature sweeping its huge oar-like arms to its sides in order to drive itself just that much faster.

Watching the distance between them randomly closing, Sage tilted his head down, which also happened to be looking ‘back’ to see the turtle hot on his trail. The stars in his right eye seemed to glimmer as he ran through all the possible futures that he could act upon. Most of his ideas seemed to lead nowhere, most of them simply serving to buy him more time, but he wondered if making such moves were just borrowing time. He’d made himself a lifelong enemy in this giant turtle, and even he felt offended at his past self for even entertaining the idea of wanting to befriend such a pathetic monster. With the gap between them getting smaller and the number of choices running out, Sage finally made the decision on his course of action.

On the Inner World a row of proud men and women with their backs straight and their chests held high stood at attention. In front of them, an old man with a long white beard and surprisingly large and taut muscles walked back and forth. The man’s violet eyes seemed to pick out each and every one of their flaws, lingering upon the part of their body that troubled them the most.

“You still need to put more pressure onto your back leg when striking.”

“You are letting your left side guard down too much and there is a weak spot developing on your shoulder.”

The old man continued the harsh criticism of each of these people, giving each of them a pointer despite the disapproving look in his eyes. Finally, when he got to the end of the line he let out a loud sigh and looked towards the sky for a long moment. Then his gaze fell upon the people in the line once again, “You are all the best with underwater techniques, so you’ll have to do. Get to work!”