Chapter 57
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 57
The moment the demonic cultivator's aura shifted, Ise launched an Earth Spear.
A sharpened mass of earth shot straight for the woman's heart.
Her reaction was equally swift. Bending over backward to let the Earth Spear glide past, she brought the flute to her lips in a split second.
Piiii—!
A sharp, nerve-grating note pierced the valley.
Inside the enclosure, the demonic beasts surged forward, veins bulging in their dark, bloodshot eyes.
Three-Headed Chickens with beaks packed full of razor-sharp teeth, beasts that looked like a cross between foxes and wolves, and serpentine demonic creatures pounced with ear-splitting shrieks.
The charging horde of demonic beasts was a chilling sight.
Yet Ise didn't move. To the enemy, he appeared frozen with fear. He simply tightened his grip on his small axe.
Just a little closer.
The beasts closed the distance. Through Ise’s Spirit Eye, the position and speed of every single creature registered with absolute clarity.
As they drew dangerously close, a twisted look of satisfaction spread across the woman’s face—she was certain he wouldn't survive.
Just as the leading Three-Headed Chicken opened its beak, its teeth mere inches away, Ise funneled spiritual energy into the armor worn beneath his Daoist robe.
Thwack!
Hundreds of long needles burst outward from the Needle Eruption Armor.
The Dharma Treasure unleashed its full might, its power capable of piercing everything in Ise’s immediate vicinity.
All three heads of the Three-Headed Chicken were impaled at once, leaving the creature thrashing helplessly in midair. Beasts skewered from flank to spine stiffened, dying before they could even gasp for breath.
A single strike.
With just one activation, the ferocious pack of demonic beasts was reduced to a cluster of suspended hedgehogs.
"N-No, no!"
Despair swept over the demonic cultivator’s face, quickly morphing into sheer horror. The creatures she had spent a lifetime nurturing had been wiped out in an instant.
One beast, lucky enough to avoid immediate death despite a gaping hole through its belly, continued to clatter its teeth. It foolishly dragged its needle-riddled body toward Ise.
Indifferently, Ise swung his small axe and severed its head, before withdrawing his spiritual energy to retract the needles.
Thud, thud, thud.
The impaled beasts dropped from midair, collapsing onto the ground in unison.
Ise stepped across the gory landscape of scattered blood and flesh. Suddenly, he accelerated, springing forward to close the gap.
The woman’s reaction was a beat too slow, her mind still reeling from the shock of losing all her demonic beasts at once.
It was a clear opening, yet Ise remained cautious. Fearing she might have a hidden trump card, he halted his approach and leaped backward instead.
Only then did the demonic cultivator snap back to her senses, pulling out talismans and hurling them in rapid succession.
No defensive Dharma Artifact, it seems.
Nothing had triggered even when he was right on top of her. Apart from her pack of demonic beasts, she didn't seem to have any special tricks up her sleeve.
Basic Dharma Spells like Fireball Talismans and Lightning Flow Talismans flew at him one after another. Ise raised the Golden Supreme Parasol. Flames and lightning scattered weakly against the shield.
"Aaagh! Stay back! Don't come any closer!"
Step by step, Ise closed in on her, maintaining a pace that would allow him to retreat at a moment's notice.
As the distance between them narrowed, the demonic cultivator's face drained of color.
Once her final talisman was blocked, Ise’s small axe cleaved through her arm, severing it completely. The demonic cultivator collapsed to her knees.
"Spare me, Senior!"
Her fighting spirit was utterly crushed. Still refusing to let his guard down, Ise summoned an Earth Spear and drove it straight through her abdomen.
Pinned against the rock wall by the Earth Spear, the demonic cultivator coughed up a mouthful of blood.
"Kehooh...!"
Only after deploying the Shadow Net Formation to bind her entire body did Ise finally look down at the battered woman.
"P-Please, Senior... Resources, dual cultivation, I'll give you whatever you want! Just spare my life..."
Instead of answering, Ise slowly approached. Carefully watching his step to avoid the pooling blood, he placed his palm flat against her forehead.
The Meridian-Severing Art.
It was a technique he had recently acquired after paying spirit stones at the Main Mountain's Library 1st Pavilion.
As energy surged through her body, shredding her spirit veins to pieces, the demonic cultivator's eyes widened in sheer agony.
"This is...!"
A technique used by the Great Martial Dao to interrogate and enslave captured cultivators of Demonic Path Sects—an absolute nightmare incarnate for demonic cultivators.
Her body convulsed violently. The sound of her spirit roots shattering from their very foundation echoed from within her, a faint cracking audible only to those with razor-sharp senses.
"Ah... Aaargh! No!"
Having lost her spirit roots, the woman snapped her head up. Her face twisted with the horrifying realization that the spiritual energy within her had ceased to flow forever.
"Y-You bastard...! Th-This technique..." Her lips trembled uncontrollably. "You... You're a dog of the Great Martial Dao! How could a demonic cultivator sell out his own comrades to become a hound for the Great Martial Dao?!"
"Who's your comrade, you disgusting demonic scum?"
Ise looked down at her expressionlessly. Leaving it at that, he pressed the small axe against her neck.
"Now. Let's finish what we were talking about."
Blood vessels ruptured in her eyes. Unbothered, Ise calmly asked, "Do you know anything about the Foundation Establishment demonic cultivator who controls the Death Wind Black Tiger? Or perhaps the one controlling the Wadu Scholar?"
Information on the demonic cultivator who had attacked him, or the enemy of his family—either would do.
But instead of answering, the demonic cultivator gathered saliva and spat at his face.
Ise merely tilted his head to let it fly past, then ignited a fire spell at his fingertips and directly cauterized the severed stump of her shoulder.
"Aaaaaagh!"
"Next time, I'll cut off your ankles. Now that you're a mortal, you'd better hang on to what limbs you have left."
"You... You..."
"If you cooperate, I'll spare your life. Where is your main mountain?"
"...You ignorant, filthy butchers. With you bastards crawling through every nook and cranny of these mountains, how could we possibly have a main mountain here!" The woman let out a bloody laugh. "As if you ever intended to let me live anyway!"
Ise straightened up. "If you won't cooperate, so be it. I'll just drag you to the Main Mountain and have them extract everything using the Mind-Reading Art. I wasn't expecting much from you anyway."
At those words, her laughter slowly faded, replaced by a strange, twisted smirk.
"...You're going to die here." Her eyes darted briefly toward the ridge behind Ise. "Did you think... I was just wasting time talking to you? You worm. You'll regret ever setting foot here."
At that moment, a thick, viscous surge of demonic energy pressed in from behind Ise. It was dense, heavy, and immense—as if the demonic energy itself had coalesced into a solid mass. His Dokkaebi Sense flared late, screaming a sharp warning.
Then came a roaring cry.
"You bas-taaaard!"
The voice thundered through the valley, forcing Ise to snap his head around.
"Get away from her right now!"
Another demonic cultivator was approaching at breakneck speed.
A vast, overflowing wave of demonic energy—similar to the Qi Refining Stage cultivators he had faced at the Dharma Battle Tournament. It was unmistakably the aura of Great Completion.
"Wife! You bastard!! Get away from her this instant!"
The enraged roar shook the entire valley, sending flocks of mountain birds bursting from the trees.
The pieces quickly fell into place in Ise’s mind.
The barrier formation that detected intruders and stripped away Spirit Concealment Techniques... The Demonic Beast Tamer who hadn't used a single formation...
It wasn't one person employing two distinct arts of beast taming and formation crafting. There had been two demonic cultivators from the very beginning. Someone else had laid the formations.
Without a word, Ise lowered his stance, refusing to look back.
Battles against cultivators were always fraught with variables, but he had never encountered a wildcard this huge.
His decision was swift.
With a flash of his axe, the demonic cultivator pinned to the wall had her neck half-severed, her head slumping limply to the side. As her final breath faded, the woman's eyes slowly rolled back.
Failing to gather information was frustrating, but the incoming opponent was at the Great Completion of the Qi Refining Stage.
When facing a dangerous enemy, eliminate even the smallest variable first. That was the teaching of Master Mongryeon.
"I’ll kill you! I’ll tear you to shreds and feed you to my beasts!"
"Sorry to break it to you, but you don't have any beasts left to feed."
Only then did the demonic cultivator take in the corpses of the beasts scattered across the ground. A look of pure madness crossed his face.
Stay calm. Provoke him.
A 10-Star Qi Refining Stage cultivator. Excluding the Foundation Establishment demonic cultivator who belonged to an entirely different Major Realm and had forced him to flee for his life, this was the most formidable enemy he had ever faced.
He's in a hurry.
Desperate to save the wife dying in a pool of blood behind Ise, he would want to end this as quickly as possible. Impatience creates openings. And Ise would exploit those openings ruthlessly.
Formations are less effective in direct, close-quarters combat. If he's a formation master, I can definitely handle him.
Drawing closer and seeing his wife's condition, the man's eyes shot full of blood. His pupils turned inhuman, shrinking back to reveal beastly whites.
As he closed in, the demonic cultivator produced a large brush and swept it through the air.
Ise immediately understood the meaning behind the movement. The most fundamental method of formation deployment—using a formation artifact.
Not knowing what formation he was casting, Ise couldn't allow him to finish.
With his right hand, Ise drew the Twin Sickle Spirit Domain Uprising and thrust the spear artifact into the ground.
A barrier expanded, enveloping the surrounding area.
The man on the ridge faltered for a moment. The half-drawn formation pattern in midair dissolved, and the glow at the tip of his brush vanished.
Simultaneously, Ise leaped forward like lightning, aiming his small axe straight for the man's neck. It was a one-hit-kill hunting style that had subdued almost every enemy he had ever faced.
On top of that, he cast the Metal Attribute spell Vajra Lock—a spell that forged the blade of a weapon to be infinitely harder and sharper.
But the moment the domain of the Twin Sickle Spirit Domain Uprising expanded, the demonic cultivator seemed to sense something amiss. He immediately aborted his formation deployment and bolted out of the domain's range.
Enraged to his limit and pressed for time, yet he retreats?
Ise pursued him at full speed, but even with his demonic energy sealed by the domain, the physical capabilities of a Great Completion Qi Refining demonic cultivator were extraordinary.
Right before the man escaped the edge of the barrier, Ise managed to swing his small axe, but it only left a thin line of blood across the man's chest before he slipped away.
Outside the barrier, Ise swung his axe once more, but the demonic cultivator blocked it head-on.
Clang!
It didn't sound like iron striking stone, but like stone crashing into an even harder stone.
A sharp sting rattled through Ise's wrist.
Ise immediately bounded backward. The very next second, a red burst of light exploded where he had been standing just moments ago.
"Tricky bastard," the demonic cultivator spat through gritted teeth. "That spear artifact incorporates the principles of a Demonic Energy Sealing Formation. Sly rat."
For the first time, the Twin Sickle Spirit Domain Uprising had been neutralized.
A shadow of dismay crossed Ise’s face.