The Wind and Cloud Spirit Tiger
The destructive power unleashed when two mid-grade spells amplified each other was truly terrifying.
It was a combination of the brutally heavy, frigid force unique to water-attribute magic and the lethal spell-breaking power and relentlessness characteristic of lightning-attribute magic. Even metal suffused with spiritual energy would be torn apart and ground to powder in a single instant.
A short while later.
When the Deep Sea Cold Ice Suppression Prison, infused with the power of lightning, had completely vanished, the only thing left to see was a scattering of blackened fragments drifting feebly to the ground.
Even a demon follower with a stubborn grip on life, one who had radiated an aura at the Golden Core level, seemed to have no hope whatsoever of surviving such an attack.
"I might have killed you a little too mercifully... I'll have to come back later and play with you properly."
Wouldn't it only be right to return everything he'd suffered, if not tenfold? At this point, no matter how much he beat them down, he'd only repaid about ten percent of what he was owed.
Now then...
With that thought, he combed through his memories from the time in question, trying to recall which direction that palace lay in.
The moment he settled on a direction, he sensed two auras approaching rapidly at a level comparable to the middle-aged man he'd just killed.
"Hm."
Combining his concealment arts with the Dream Illusion Only Mind, he was confident he could hide from them indefinitely. But he found himself curious whether he could take on those two at once, and since this world was hardly a place where people came seeking favors, he boldly prepared for a fight.
He immediately deployed the last of the mid-grade Five Elements spells he had yet to cast.
Mixed into a light exhale, countless incantation glyphs lit up and pulsed outward, and in an instant, swells of white clouds and black storm clouds gathered, rapidly swelling in size. Alongside a quiet yet ferocious gale, they took on a definite, tangible form.
Wind-Cloud Spirit Tiger Guardian.
It took the shape of a house-sized great beast, its hide a swirling gale of pale green, black storm clouds laid over a base of pristine white like valiant stripes.
One had to understand that the tiger in the spell's name was no tiger of Earth. There were indeed several similarities, black stripes included, but befitting a form conjured by magic, the whole of it was far sleeker and more majestic.
The manifested beast gazed down at Han Yujin for a moment with glinting sapphire-jade eyes, then swiftly shared its will with its caster and settled into a battle stance.
Right around then, the two enemies came flying swiftly through the air and revealed themselves.
One was, revoltingly enough, a bald man whose skin was tattooed with countless blood-red worms writhing and crawling about at random; the other was a figure with pitch-black eyes and what might have been a pair of horns or antennae growing from his head.
- Just what gutter did some mongrel like you crawl out of, to dare challenge our Ikapa Order?
The bald worm-tattooed man asked in a strange, overlapping chorus of voices.
Of course, Han Yujin answered not with words but by invoking the Six Paths of Reincarnation.
And this time, unlike with the middle-aged man before, he didn't hold its power back for defense alone.
The reincarnation of six worlds, blooming like a halo behind him, drew out the wrath of the beast path in concentrated force. Caught unprepared for the divine ability and forced to look upon it directly, the two demon followers' faces twisted like vengeful spirits in the very same instant.
- Kyaaaaaaaak···!!!
The antennaed demon follower abruptly let out a tearing shriek and lunged at the worm-tattooed bald man beside him. The bald man, as if he'd been waiting for it, roared back in rage and hatred and counterattacked in kind.
BOOOM-!!
When their strange, blood-tinged darknesses collided, it was as if a sudden eclipse had fallen over the already gloomy sky.
With bizarre tearing sounds, fragments of darkness rained down in all directions, and wherever they touched the earth they sizzled and crackled, rotting and moldering everything across a considerable radius.
The forest, which had carried only a silent, desolate air, was devastated in the blink of an eye.
- Wait···!
As they traded blows several times, whittling away at each other's strength, the one to recover his senses first was the antennaed demon follower, who had been the first to be swept up in the frenzy.
At that very moment, Han Yujin's spell-conjured Wind-Cloud Spirit Tiger pounced. Befitting a being made of wind-attribute magic, it was terrifyingly fast.
The great beast's charge was so fierce its form roughened and frayed at the edges, and its forepaw swung down with a fearsome sonic boom. The sphere of dark energy raised against it shuddered violently, as though being indiscriminately shredded apart.
At the same moment, a beam of Pure Yang Extreme Flame Bullet Thread, fired at blistering speed, punched through the barrier from another direction and turned its interior into a raging inferno.
The antennaed demon follower's tearing scream rang out across the area, deafening.
- You dare-!!
The bald worm-tattooed man, recovering his senses a beat too late, roared as though still gripped by fury and charged straight at Han Yujin. It was a horrific sight: sinister claws of darkness formed on both hands while the worm tattoos across his whole body took on physical substance and burst forth all at once.
In response, Han Yujin swept his hand through the air.
It looked at a glance like a simple gesture, but it was a movement imbued with the subtle mastery of the man who had founded the Wonryeong Mudo, and layered atop that movement came the divine ability he had most recently mastered.
Origin Power Great Hand.
A vast, translucent hand shimmering into existence in midair mirrored Han Yujin's gesture exactly and slammed into the oncoming, revolting bald man.
CRASH-!!
A thunderous clang erupted, like metal smashing violently against metal.
Flung back as fast as he had come, the bald man seemed briefly unable to gather himself—then flared up in even greater fury, igniting his blood-tinged black aura like an explosion.
In the meantime, the Wind-Cloud Spirit Tiger was having a hard struggle against the antennaed demon follower. Considering the level of its caster, Han Yujin, it was only natural it would be outmatched against an enemy exuding an early-stage Golden Core aura.
KRAAAAGH-!!
At the Spirit Tiger's colossal roar, the air ahead rippled and resonated en masse, and the spears of darkness mid-flight burst apart in wild disarray. Still, about half of them retained their forms and came streaking in, tearing great chunks from the cloud-and-wind body and fouling it.
But the antennaed demon follower fighting the Tiger was already in terrible condition, thanks to that one hit from the Pure Yang Extreme Flame Bullet Thread. Half of him crumbled endlessly into worms only to reform, over and over, while the other half, grievously scorched, groaned in agony.
So that aura was the only thing Golden Core about him.
Han Yujin finally confirmed it, having steered the fight to a rough stalemate two-on-one.
If these men had been true Golden Core cultivators equipped with the manifold clever means that entailed—magic treasures, talismans, spells properly learned and wielded—there was no way a battle this effortless would have been possible.
In other words, these two weren't opponents of any particular superior ability. If anything, they were dull-witted brutes who happened to have raw strength and nothing else.
"Which is why you go down this easily."
The instant his muttered, tongue-clicking words ended—
The worm-tattooed bald man, having finally succeeded in closing the distance, witnessed the shredded body of Han Yujin, torn apart by his claws of darkness, dispersing like a violet-colored dream and vanishing.
Then, from behind the antennaed demon follower, who was still groaning in pain, Han Yujin appeared as if from nowhere and seized him with the Origin Power Great Hand, crushing him.
There wasn't even room for a scream.
With his body utterly crushed within the translucent, shimmering hand of energy, the demon follower's remains writhed like countless worms in an attempt at revival—but the instant after, they were engulfed in the Pure Yang Extreme Flame that burst forth like an explosion, reduced wholesale to ash and scattered on the wind.
- What in the··· this is impossible···!
the bald man whispered, as though moaning.
There was no way he could win alone against an enemy he couldn't beat even two-on-one. The illusion-like means by which the man had vanished at the end, in particular, had chilled him to the bone—he hadn't detected even a whisper of magical presence from it.
Whatever it was that had first seized their emotions and set them savagely upon each other; whatever means had rebounded his own charge; the wind-spirit beast that would clearly be converging on him now alongside the man—there was nothing easy about any of it. Fighting this enemy would be madness.
Having finished that judgment, he spun and fled at once. Trails of strange darkness scattered behind him like afterimages, and his speed was considerable.
But when it came to movement arts, there was Han Yujin, and then there was everyone else.
CRACK-BOOM-!
The thunderclap of his Lightning Movement Art erupted, and his body, trailing a flash of light, chased down the enemy at a speed like teleportation. The Wind-Cloud Spirit Tiger likewise shot forward at the same speed it had shown when attacking, falling not a step behind.
- N-no···!!
In the end, the caught-up bald man tried to cry something out in desperation, but unfortunately, Han Yujin had little interest in conversing with those who served demons.
The instant the outspread Origin Power Great Hand swatted the bald man and sent him flying, the Wind-Cloud Spirit Tiger, which had closed in right beside him, snapped up the off-balance man in its jaws and began chewing and swallowing him without mercy.
As though caught in a storm of countless wind blades, the bald demon follower wailed as he was hacked apart into hundreds, then thousands, of pieces.
Once again, the corpse fragments writhed and attempted revival like the others had—but Han Yujin, standing beside it, laid a hand on the Spirit Tiger's body and fed Pure Yang Extreme Flame into it, and the pieces met the end of crumbling into ash.
"Whew···!"
Having swept his Divine Sense over the surroundings, he finally confirmed his victory and let some of the tension drain from his shoulders.
Nothing had come close to a crisis, but this hadn't been the kind of fight he could take casually, like clearing away rabble.
Spells consumed... about twenty percent.
Despite fighting with lavish, unrestrained use of every divine ability and mid-grade spell he had, that was all he'd burned through. Having completed the smelting of the Dragon Heart, Han Yujin was emphatically no ordinary Dharma Soul stage cultivator.
Within the same realm, he might well rank among the strongest in the entire cultivation world, even if one scoured it end to end.
After resting a while longer, he channeled more spell power into the Wind-Cloud Spirit Tiger, which was still maintaining its summoning, restoring it to its original condition. Then he leapt up onto its back and issued a command through his intent.
Grrrrr···!
With a low, weighty growl, the Wind-Cloud Spirit Tiger shot off toward one direction at its usual blistering speed. Han Yujin, perched atop it, was slightly surprised by how much more comfortable the ride was than he'd expected.
Despite galloping along at such breakneck speed, there was almost no jolt—perhaps because the beast kicked off the open air itself as it ran—and as a being born to command the wind, it even warded off the headwind that came rushing at them of its own accord.
Amid his satisfaction, he was able to make his way toward the palace of his memories.
The worry that an even more powerful enemy might appear remained nothing more than a worry.
Of course, he didn't believe that this was the full extent of the demon followers' strength. It was merely that the forces stationed at this holy site had been temporarily dealt with; linger here too long, he figured, and nine times out of ten far stronger enemies would come swarming.
- How dare you commit such acts and think you'll survive-!
- Your soul shall suffer torment for eternity!
But either way, it was certain that no stronger enemies were here right now.
KWA-KWA-KWANG-!!
- Gyaak···!
- Aaaaaak···!
He mercilessly swept away the sinister demon followers who dared bar his path, spewing every manner of curse at him, cutting them down with a barrage of spells.
The palace's grand halls and corridors, once beautifully adorned, grew smeared with the traces of destruction and slaughter—but it had all been self-defense, and he felt not the slightest twinge of hesitation.
Where to next?
Having swept away one crowd of demon followers blocking the way, he paused to take stock of the palace's convoluted layout with his Divine Sense.
The first place that came to mind, naturally, was the hall where that "baptism" could be received—along with the image of the massive sphere that had stood at its center, an overall murky brown-black yet wreathed in a mystical violet radiance.
That would be dangerous, no doubt.
He could simply feel it, without needing to check.
Destroying it by force would almost certainly prove impossible, and the moment he attempted such a thing, he'd likely face some horrific and powerful counterattack.
In other words, even if he did go there eventually, it ought to be pushed down the priority list. It would profit him far more to first find out just what other useful knowledge and treasures this palace held.
Still riding the Wind-Cloud Spirit Tiger, he pressed on unimpeded.
The demon followers who tried to interfere honestly didn't require his direct intervention. All it took was a swipe of the Spirit Tiger's forepaw at high speed, and an opponent would be torn into a dozen-odd pieces.
He needed only to casually defend against the occasional incoming magical attack and return a few in kind.
And so he arrived at a small library that piqued his interest considerably.
CRASH-!!
The Spirit Tiger's forepaw made short work of what had looked to be a very sturdily built metal door. Striding boldly inside, Han Yujin rained Pure Yang Extreme Flame Bullet Threads at the array matrices throughout the room to neutralize them, then employed his telekinetic art to gather every book his Divine Sense could detect into one place.
What followed, of course, was a period of reading.
But a short while later.
"...Hm."
The moment he realized that more than half the books were useless things steeped in religious sentiment, and the rest nothing but black magic he had no desire whatsoever to learn, his interest rapidly cooled.
The level isn't anything special, either.
That magic's system, too, showed no sign of refined structure whatsoever, and disappointment came quickly.
To think they could do things like this with blood and souls...
It stirred nothing in him but disgust. Shaking his head, he gave the remaining books only the barest skim before tossing them aside carelessly.
"Let's go."
And he resumed his exploration of the palace.
Having wasted time flipping through books full of garbage, he couldn't afford to dawdle—not knowing when some major obstruction might come crashing in.
He passed through several more halls and chambers, traversed long corridors, climbed and descended staircases, stepped briefly out into an open-air space with no ceiling before returning indoors.
The palace was truly enormous, and correspondingly labyrinthine. Without his Divine Sense, he might have done worse than get lost—he might have lost all sense of direction entirely.
And so, at some point during his continued exploration—
He came to stand before a massive door protected by an unusually sturdy array barrier.
The rabble of demon followers guarding this door had, of course, already been wiped out by the Wind-Cloud Spirit Tiger. These were men whose heads burst simply from hearing its roar, so there was nothing worth concerning himself over.
FWSHAAAH-!
Threads of Pure Yang Extreme Flame Bullet Thread lanced through the area around the door, melting through it and rattling the structure of the array barrier to its core.
He threw every scrap of his formation-magic knowledge into relentlessly unraveling the barrier, and after a short while, succeeded in bringing it down.
KWADUDUK-!!
The Origin Power Great Hand, deployed in succession, tore the door of wood and metal off its hinges without resistance.
The scene revealed within was a little eerie, and more than a little intriguing.
An altar, is it...?
Surrounding the circular dais at the heart of the hall in ring upon ring, around a hundred pits roughly the size of a person, stained a faint blood-red, were arranged at regular intervals.
And upon that circular dais knelt something in the shape of a colossal human figure, shriveled like a mummy, cradling in both hands a pendant that glowed with a dark golden light.
The instant his eyes fell upon the pendant, Han Yujin's brow furrowed slightly—he had the feeling that he'd just heard the faint whisper of someone unknown.