"So, you don"t seem to want to cooperate with us? I cannot totally blame you for not trusting me unconditionally. Still, you should be aware that if I wanted to be your enemy, I could have attacked you outright. Are you sure you wish to point your blades at me instead of talking things out?" w.a.n.g Ba Tan continued l pretending to be amicable, but in fact, he was trying to open Jin up with his chi persuasion tactics.
After all, words were also part of his repertoire of weapons, just that they were imbued with chi to weaken Jin"s mental defences. After scanning through Jin"s memories, he believed he would be able to influence the young man. Yet, unexpectedly he had encountered spots of blackness when browsing through with many of them always leading back to a room with a single lightbulb which was seen hanging from the ceiling.
w.a.n.g Ba Tan knew that certain spots of blackness within the string of memories could stem from mental trauma like PTSD. That small room indicated that he might have been tortured there at one point in time, yet there were way too many spots in Jin"s "string" that he started to think that perhaps someone had tempered with it externally to make him forget about it.
Still, he found it odd that while there was an intentional removal of memories, he had encountered no mental barriers whatsoever.
Jin did not answer, merely smiled as he listened to those chi imbued words. They were nostalgic music to his ears as he recalled how Kraft had made him listen to his chi imbued words to the point that he nearly went mad.
"Breaking your psyche and rebuilding one"s mental defences is important. Never ever rely on barriers! They are about as useful as you sitting at home defenceless with a burglar outside. If that person wants something from you bad enough, they WILL find a way to either bypa.s.s your mental lock or simply smash their way through using brute force. In both scenarios, if you don"t have a weapon to defend yourself, your fate will be up to the intruder"s mercy!" Kraft had said when he attacked Jin out of the blue and started this involuntary training for his master.
And true to his words, this torturing chamber exercise eventually became part of Jin"s weekly routine where Kraft would be that "burglar" always barging in uninvited into Jin"s mind at unG.o.dly hours to test his psyche defences. Later on it was also to check if Pei"s barriers were still on par to her capabilities and help her reinforce them. And whenever Kraft managed to force his way in, the crafty fox would bring Jin back to that dark room with a single lightbulb and force him to fight. (even though to Jin it felt more like abuse)
"And yet, here I am back in this lousy imitation of that black room." Jin thought to himself as he kept his breathing stable and subsequently went to attack w.a.n.g Ba Tan with a straight stab.
"You think you can defeat me in here? Just because you have enough willpower to fight doesn"t mean anything. As you can see, you have no control over your "realm" here. I can do whatever I like!" w.a.n.g Ba Tan gave up on his sneaky way of doing things and decided to beat Jin into submission.
He raised a pillar in front of Jin, hitting him from the bottom which caused him to trip and fall. However, being a veteran cultivator also meant that the Dungeon Supplier had the finesse to recover from it quickly and continued his attack.
Subsequently, w.a.n.g Ba Tan sent even more pillars up from not just the ground but the sides and the ceilings in an attempt to slow and stop Jin. As Jin proceeded further, those pillars became spikes while some of the spikes branched out and turned into more pillars obstructing Jin"s way. To make matters worse, the room continued to expand as if he was running on a never-ending treadmill which did not allow Jin to catch up.
However, the Astral Panda Cultivator did not stop in his tracks. Without using any extra tricks, he continued to focus on reaching his opponent and kept running straight at him without any distractions. The Maqi he had was concentrated inside his lungs and body movements rather than on his sword, enabling him to dodge rather effortlessly. Though he suffered some superficial cuts, they were non consequential to him.
"What the h.e.l.l? How is he still unfazed by all this?!" w.a.n.g Ba Tan thought to himself as he now started to wield his chi and caused those pillars to turn into multiple infernos being hurled at Jin while the blocks of rock continued to emerge from every corner of the room. Yet all Jin did was to run and even use the blocks and pillars to evade the trailing fire blast.
Only as time went by did w.a.n.g Ba Tan have to admit that Jin"s defences were nearly impenetrable. Whatever attacks came his way, he would either evade or walk "em off. There was nothing stopping him from continuously running towards w.a.n.g Ba Tan as if the elder"s control over this reality meant nothing to him.
And at the same time, Jin also started to realise why his Gramps did not teach him to manipulate this current plane of subconsciousness and even stripped him off most of his powers. Control comes from within and not from external factors. To add on, Kraft"s punis.h.i.+ng tuition lessons enabled him to withstand most, if not all of the mind persuasion tactics. (He did guarantee that no one could ever break Jin"s mind as much as Kraft had.)
"And most mind users do not necessarily have a resilient physique against martial arts? And here I thought that training was all useless. Guess my teachers really did eat more salt than the amount of rice I ate." Jin grinned as he placed his katana on his waist for balance and continued to run forth.
Soon enough, w.a.n.g Ba Tan ran out of his own personal chi with the uninterrupted bursts of chi attacks, causing his metaphysical body to weaken in Jin"s personal plane. He never expected Jin to be able to withstand his chi persuasion tactics and manipulation of the realm.
"It"s fine, I can utilise the surrounding chi even through his realm. That should teach him who is the real boss around here!" Elder w.a.n.g thought as he tried to absorb the chi around him, yet discovered was extremely difficult to absorb. It was too dense and felt more like mana rather than chi. In the first place, he could not fathom why there was mana in the plane of a cultivator.
Even though it was a little tiring, Jin did not exert anything other than his stamina. And with his Maqi strengthening his body, he had plenty of strength left to catch up to the Banned Emperor Elder. Obviously, the Astral Panda Cultivator could see that w.a.n.g Ba Tan was getting desperate, and he seemed to be gathering the strength to use one last line of defence as Jin got too close for comfort.
That was when Jin felt elated that he could finally use his hidden trump card behind his sleeve. "Now!" Jin shouted as loud as possible, momentarily scaring w.a.n.g Ba Tan after minutes of being silent throughout the whole fight.
During that scare, a majestic white tiger popped out from the back of w.a.n.g Ba Tan and bit his neck while plunging his claws on the front of his chest.
It gave him an absolute shock which was one that he would not recover from. The weight of the tiger after its pounce caused him to fall to the ground as Jin raced towards him and stabbed his sword through w.a.n.g Ba Tan"s other side of the neck which inadvertently went to his heart.
"Cough! You think that this will kill me? All you did was remove *cough* my metaphysical form! I will haunt you in your dreams! Next time it won"t be so easy for you to recognise me! You will live in fear for eternity, knowing that I will corrupt your mind and take over your body!" w.a.n.g Ba Tan cursed until he felt an intense white electric shock throughout his body.
Not only that, he realised the spiritual hold or link which he had latched on to Jin"s plane of subconsciousness was not as strong as it should be.
"Got to thank you for showing me where you were hiding." An old harsh tone was heard from the back of the White Tiger.
"Gramps!" Jin"s face was delighted when he saw Ming rubbing the White Tiger"s head while the repeated new revelations shocked the imposter.
He had no doubts that this was his true grandfather, reigning control over the place.