The green mist swept towards Beast Keeper Feng, but the man showed no fear at all. The muscled old man smirked towards Sage and the bars separating them flickered with energy, creating a solid barrier between them. The old man was pleased inwardly. This Lang Sheng had already shown off an expertise with poisons, not only was he prepared for them, each of these pens already had plenty of safeguards against them.

Unfortunately for the Beast Keeper, what Sage used was not a simple poison. While it may lack greatly in potency when compared to others, the medium it used was extremely unusual. The Sunset Rain Snake’s venom could corrode nearly every kind of defense, but the Searing Greenrose Miasma didn’t need to. The spiritual nature of the miasma meant it outright avoided most defenses. Only purely spirit type energies could affect it. The Icefire Valley had been something of a forbidden zone and only once every few decades did the miasma let up enough for Nascent Souls to dare to traverse it with great difficulty.

The Greenrose Miasma was a more powerful version of the miasma that surrounded the Icefire Valley, improved over thousands of years on the Inner World. Sage’s personal version also included ‘Searing’ in the name, tweaked so he could use it with two laws, both of which were now being moved with full force as the green mist swept right through the barrier and the bars as if they weren’t even there. The Beast Keeper’s eyes widened and he had little time to react. The old man fled at his full speed, but the area he was in was a somewhat narrow walkway, only intended for a caretaker to bring in a cart of food while remaining out of reach of the beast within the cage. The walkway on the other side of the bars was ten feet wide, but this was nothing in comparison to the speed of a Nascent Soul or their attacks. Beast Keeper Deng had to instantly choose between the closer door that led into the ‘den’ where they’d entered from the secret passage, or the further away door that led out of the beast enclosure.

The old man chose the longer path, running towards the door that led out of the beast enclosure. Sage purposely chose to aim his attack in the center of the walkway so that if the Beast Keeper chose to escape the enclosure he’d be running right into the most intense concentration of miasma. If he decided to head back into the den it would be much easier. Since this place was run by the Beast Keeper, it would not be good to let him flee back into his home ground. What if the guy just ran out and opened up all the cages? Wouldn’t it be a farce to spend so much effort to beat these beasts only to find themselves face to face with the Sunset Rain Snake? Who knew what other sorts of monsters they kept down here?

Sadly, the old man didn’t go along with his trick and chose to brave the miasma to escape towards that home territory of his. Seeing this, Sage put his full force into the building law energy, aiming to inflict as much damage to the old traitor as possible. Realizing the danger of the miasma, the old man uses everything he can to defend and manages to block the majority of it after getting an up close look at its nature. He expends a lot of his strength to resist the poisonous miasma and reach the door, but he seems to find a countermeasure a bit too late.

Sage recognizes the telltale sign of a green rose starting to form on the old man’s skin. He wasn’t surprised, most Nascent Souls would have a huge library of techniques to call upon and find one way or another to resist the miasma. The problem was it usually took them a bit of experimentation to find the right method. This was why the Greenrose poison was so perfectly suited to the miasma. It was extremely insidious and strenuous to resist. It didn’t inflict damage very quickly, but if it wasn’t resisted with all of a Nascent Soul’s strength, it would keep slowly spreading. The miasma as a medium made for a perfect sneak attack and the Greenrose poison gave the enemies of the Lang Clan a headache. Most would want to end the fight as soon as possible in order to deal with the poison, which made them desperate to win or escape and that gave the Lang Clan an edge.

Sage was still flying through the air, and after releasing the cloud of miasma with one hand, he aimed the other behind himself to release a jet of high pressure air. His trajectory changed from landing on top of the Charming Slate Boar to making contact with the bars of the cage. He aimed to reach between the bars, but he frowned as he got closer. The barrier was still active and blocking in front of the bars. A throwing knife appeared in his hand and he tossed it at the gap between the lattice work of metal bars. There was a crackling sound and the knife suddenly flashed with light. Then it fell towards the ground, blackened and trailing a puff of dark smoke in its wake.

Sage changed his path again, using bursts of air to stop from running into the bars and then shooting straight downwards instead. He lands right behind the Charming Slate Boar and then stabs one of the blades shaped out of his Jade Mantle and made of Poison Qi right into the backside of the stone skinned beast. There was a strange lesson in one of the books he’d read in the Timeless Master’s Library. There are two parts of the body that are always a weak point, the eyes, and the anus. No matter how tough the hide or scale of a beast, that rear exit would always be much weaker.

The only real downside was he had to watch.

A strangled cry was released, drowning out the chiming of the boar’s tusk tapping against its rib plate. Then there was a flurry of chaotic clanging while the boar flailed around in pain. It took off running, trying to escape the nightmare that was behind it, but no matter how fast it ran it couldn’t escape from the pain of the wound that had already been inflicted upon it. After stabbing the blade into the boar, Sage twisted his shoulder and swung his arm straight down, ripping it down through the body of the beast and using the blade of Qi to disembowel it. Or, he would have, if its hide wasn’t made of such a hard stone-like material. Instead of allowing entrails to spill all over the ground, he only succeeded in dicing them up and ensuring that the poor boar would die, but it wasn’t going to be quick.

That poor creature.

Sage didn’t choose to follow after the boar and instead turned around to stab his blade up against the barrier over the bars. He’d already suspected a barrier formation of this sort already existed which is why he hadn’t bothered to copy the Beast Keeper’s move of releasing beasts through the bars. Until he had secured an escape route, there was no way he was going to show off all his tricks.