There was no way out. Every path of escape was blocked off by the stone puppets and Song Gui.
“I guess there is no other way…” Ye Wei was not pleased. Although he was given five scrolls in total, each of them were worth way more than he was comfortable spending. Using the scroll would not secure Welkin Leaves for his cousin, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
With attacks approaching from every direction, he didn’t have a choice. Therefore, he tore the green scroll. There was no way he could last long if he used a defensive scroll. Being able to take a few more hits would not have put him in a better situation.
As the offensive Myst stance was released, the scroll that was worth more than one hundred thousand silver turned into just a useless sc.r.a.p of silk.
“So this is what it feels like to be powerful?” Ye Wei felt refreshed to have complete control over so much energy. He was astonished and slowly started to understand why people would pay so much for these scrolls so much that it hurt his heart.
The runes written in demon blood came alive and floated in the air. They became a rune sequence and started to intertwine a.s.sembling into a ring of flame that eventually settled on the ground. The ring of fire brightened and encircled Ye Wei. Some of the people who were close to him could see the bright red light leaking from between the puppets.
Although not his own power, Ye Wei was in full control of the Singeing Ground stance, and it only took him a gaze to guide the flame towards the brown puppets. The flame created a mirage as it approached the puppets in a spinning motion as their fists closed in on Yei Wei. With five loud rumbling noises, the force shattered them into rubble, and the heat energy set them aflame.
However, the flame did not stop growing. It followed Ye Wei’s point of vision to two hundred other brown puppets reducing them to rubble.
“How can this be? Who’s Myst stance is that?” The crowd was shocked by the ferocious attack and their eyes followed the trail of fire to Ye Wei’s location.
“Did he just use a medium-grade scroll?”
While the crowd was still surprised and stunned by the powerful stance, they notice a loud rumbling noise. As the flame died down the silver and golden puppets opened their eyes, and beams of red light shone brightly from their eyes.
“Oh no!”
With a speed far superior to the brown puppets, the silver and golden ones immediately rushed towards the cultivators like a pack of rampaging bulls. “I think the Qi disturbance from the kid’s Myst stance just woke them up…” Hong Xun’s face turn pale as the three strongest cultivators still had not worked out an answer for these stronger puppets.
The puppets’ fists fell from high up in the air, akin to a rain of meteors. Although the cultivators have been dodging and dancing through the brown puppets’ attacks, the silver and golden ones’ awakening was unexpected. They didn’t antic.i.p.ate the stronger puppets’ swiftness to be so different than the brown ones.
In a panic, more than fifty Warriors lost their lives. Some to the crushing fists while others were stomped to death either by horrified comrades or the puppets.
Hong, Luo, and Xue knew that if the panic persisted then all of the cultivators would fall sooner or later, and that would be the end of their expedition. Although they didn’t have full knowledge about what the puppets could do, they couldn’t wait any longer.
“This is it. It’s now or never…” Hong Xun took the initiative and glided down. “Everybody listen! Be calm and stick together! Watch each other’s backs if you want to live!”
In the end, the cultivators on the field were Warriors with moderate experience, so they calmed down quickly and started defending themselves methodically in small groups after Hong, Luo, and Xue stepped up and led the retaliation.
While the others were grouping up, Ye Wei was not so lucky. He was in the corner on his own with Song Gui as people were distracted by the stronger puppets and therefore forgot about him.
Too distracted by the new threat, n.o.body noticed that Ye Wei was shot by all the Blood Devourer crystals from the puppets he shattered. Ye Wei was soon surrounded by a layer of thick bloodmist. The vapor wrapped tighter and tighter and within seconds, he turned into a red coc.o.o.n.
The surge of energy from one crystal was enough to make Song Gui, a Warrior, lose his mind. Now Ye Wei was in the same situation, but instead of being struck by one crystal, Ye Wei was struck by two hundred and thirty-eight of them.
Inside the coc.o.o.n, Ye Wei’s body started heating up. The pores on his skin expanded and made it easier for the concentrated bloodmist to sink in. It wasn’t long before the aggressive and pure energy was deep under his skin, inside his muscles, organs, and bones.
The s.p.a.ce in a four-star Student’s dantian and Sentient was very limited, and even a condensed prime Warrior couldn’t fully absorb the amount of energy currently rushing into Ye Wei’s body. Ye Wei’s body was enlarging, and if the coc.o.o.n didn’t constrict it, it could have exploded already.
Rage and violent intent brought by the crystals’ energy was taking over Ye Wei’s consciousness. His memories of his father, mother, the Ye Patriarch, cousin Zhong, and Lin Zin Yan were flashing before him; then his cognition started to fade together with his conscience.
Although in this state, Ye Wei was aware of what he would become if he just gave up his sanity, so he bit lips in desperation. In the hope that doing so would stop himself from losing his mind; however, it was not very effective.
Just as he was about to be overcome by rage, the image of the Mystic Mountain appeared in his sentient. It then started to absorb the energy of the crystals. Not only did the Mystic Mountain absorb the energy, but it also purified the surge of evil red energy into soothing yet intense primal energy.
The rage he felt disappeared, and Ye Wei’s Sentient and dantian started to grow under the nourishment. Their sizes were now similar to cultivators at the Warrior rank. His cultivation would increase rapidly if he could get out of the coc.o.o.n and take the time to train. This near-death experience would actually compensate for how slow his Sentient usually absorbed primal energy from the surroundings.
Although the energy was purified, the sheer amount of it was still a problem. Ye Wei’s body was not processing it quick enough, his skin was starting to crack, and his bones were grinding against each other.
In this critical moment, the iron talisman in Ye Wei’s interspatial bag started vibrating. It started moving on of its own will and appeared outside of the bag. The talisman then broke through the coc.o.o.n and started spinning on top of Ye Wei’s head. The eighty-one grooves on the talisman started shining as it started spinning so quickly that the rust on it was thrown off.
A black texture started to seep out of the grooves and expanded like a dark vortex. As it continually sped up, the vortex started to create a strong suction that extracted and then consumed the primal energy surging inside Ye Wei’s body.
This caused the coc.o.o.n to quickly shrink and Ye Wei’s body to return to its normal size. The talisman worked a miracle, it only consumed the excessive energy, and the remaining energy started repairing his cracked skin and fractured bones.
Ye Wei could not believe the iron talisman would be so useful even he did not know what it was for. After a few cracking sound were heard more and more green webs started appearing under his skin.
Ten green webs under Ye Wei’s skin overlapped and formed a green screen which caused his body to glow mildly. He could tell his muscles were now as hard as solid wood and his bones were as strong as metal which signified a breakthrough.
Ye Wei was now a five-star Student, but his dantian and Sentient were stronger than what an ordinary six-star Student possessed, and his body did not stop storing the energy.
The green screen under his skin grew thicker as the purified energy circulated throughout his body. The rest of the purified energy saturated his meridian widening them. After absorbing even more of the purified energy, he became a six-star Student!