Xiao Ying pasted the talisman of “Silence” on her chest, and offered them each to the Heavenly Sword Sect members.

“Good sister,” shouted the burly cultivator encouragingly. “Looks like we were wrong about you. Just stick them onto our backs!”

The talisman was obviously not enough for a Foundation stage cultivator to resist the sound waves from the ebony zither, but it did help somewhat. Of far more use was the action of Xiao Ying replacing the spot of each Heavenly Sword Sect member when he could not take the pressure anymore, allowing him time to heal and return to formation.

Yin Na watched all this unfold while he was playing the ebony zither.

“Hmph,” he snorted. While his right hand was still strumming the zither, he manifested a treasure from his void ring onto his left hand.

“Hey, little girl!” he called. “Do you recognize this?”

Xiao Ying’s poorly-drawn “Silence” talisman couldn’t muffle the shouts of Yin Na outside of the formation. She could not help her curiosity and looked up.

“That’s…the Fox Calling Bell of the Immortal Da Ji!”

Yin Na grinned, as he waved the bell with his left hand.

Ring! Ring! Their bells seemed to echo in sync with the violent reverberations of the ebony zither throughout the forest.

At once, glowing yellow snouts poked from the forest floor. Soon, the forest floor was filled with Fox spirits, their tails waving excitedly at being lured out by the Fox bell.

“Attack the Diamond Formation!” Yin Na commanded.

Because he had reached Golden Core, Yin Na didn’t worry about the qi expended from using treasures like the Fox Calling Bell. He had more than enough spirit stones looted from the Yellow Fox Treasury to replenish himself if need be.

The Fox spirits obeyed whoever wielded the Fox Calling Bell, and they threw themselves onto the Diamond Formation. They blew fox fire onto the shield, they scratched at it with their claws, they did not even care that the Sword Rain would kill them or be caught in the Nine Fireworks Chain Reaction.

Seeing the spirit foxes so treasured by her Yellow Fox sect throw away their lives for the man who eradicated her very sect, Xiao Ying felt the layers of her sanity peel away. She coughed blood in pure anger.

“Damn you, Yin Na!” she screamed. “I want your life, we cannot share an existence under the same Heaven! I’ll kill you and eat your flesh!”

Xiao Ying was driven to a frenzy. She began firing attacks from inside the Diamond Formation alongside Tian Ji Han.

“Xiao Ying, get back to maintaining the defenses!” Tian Ji Han shouted.

Yin Na laughed. “You, a measly Qi Condensation beginner, want to grind my bones and devour my flesh? Aren’t you presumptuous!”

Yin Na then opened his void ring, and said: “Ethereal Hound. Avenge your fallen clones!”

The single Ethereal Hound leaped from Yin Na’s person. Before it hit the ground, it had duplicated itself rapidly until there were… 512 Ethereal Hounds!

At the sight of the Ethereal Hounds now working alongside the Spirit Foxes, their horrible razor-sharp teeth snapping away at the Diamond Formation’s defenses, Xiao Ying lost it.

Blood sprayed from her mouth.

“Oh no, the formation!” The righteous cultivators were in utter dismay. Because Xiao Ying had neglected to maintain her part in the defenses while another righteous cultivator was busy healing himself, the shields of the Diamond Formation began to flicker.

Yin Na’s eyes flashed. This was the moment he was waiting for.

Timing it right as the shields of the Diamond Formation were flickering, he threw an object into the center of the Diamond.

It was the healing Pill, and it went straight into the left nostril of the Spicy Oil Boar!

The Spicy Oil Boar grunted and inhaled the object in pain, as the pill went down its gullet.

At once, the stunned and weakened Spicy Oil Boar’s body began to glow with nourishing yellow light, a river of red, oily sweat poured from its body as it was reinvigorated.

“Eliminate the weakest!” Yin Na shouted.

The Spicy Oil Boar had grown accustomed to Yin Na’s orders, and was loyal to it for feeding it and saving it from the verge of starvation. At the same time, it was resentful of its Yellow Fox sect captors. It may have been a coincidence that the weakest one in the formation also happened to be Xiao Ying, as the Spicy Oil Boar flared its nostrils in rage and quickly twisted its head in her direction.

“NO!” Tian Ji Han shouted as he tried to save the defenses of the Diamond Formation.

WHAM!

The boar’s tusks punctured Xiao Ying’s torso, and flung her like a ragdoll out of the walls of the formation.

Her corpse tore through the branches of several trees as it fell onto the forest floor with a dull thud.

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The Spicy Oil Boar was not done, it began charging towards the next weakest link in the Diamond Formation: the early Foundation stage cultivator.

Very quickly, the Diamond Formation fell apart.

The Spirit Foxes and Ethereal Hounds who were attacking the perimeter of the Diamond Formation rushed through its destroyed barriers.

“Don’t worry about defending any more. I’ll deal with Yin Na, you guys just escape!” Tian Ji Han shouted.

He rose several meters into the air, his Golden Core aura emanating and oppressive. His white hair flew back from the sheer pressure, his killing intent rising.

The Spicy Oil Boar below him was in a frenzy, its tusks were goring and tossing Ethereal Hounds and Spirit Foxes alike, as it was furiously chasing the other Heavenly Sword Sect members to their deaths.

“Nooo, Master Tian Ji Han, you cannot!”

“Master Tian Ji Han, let us avenge the brave demonic sect girl who died with a righteous heart, together!”

“Senior, we can’t leave you alone, you’re the shining hope of our Heavenly Sword Sect, we will draw away the mobs so that you can live to avenge this day!”

“Don’t be irrational!” Tian Ji Han growled. “I will fight Yin Na one-on-one, no one else is allowed to throw away their lives for me today!”

Tian Ji Han’s words were very unusual, even for a righteous cultivator. In the world of cultivation, it is a dog-eat-dog world. All living beings are treated as pawns, and righteous sect cultivators were often hypocrites who would rather risk the wellbeing of others in order to benefit themselves. But Tian Ji Han had always followed the path of benevolence. He would never sacrifice the lives of his men for achieving victory.

“Master Tian Ji Han,” smiled the burly cultivator. “We are not naive. We cannot escape these Ethereal Hounds even on our mounts, we wasted too much qi and these dogs killed an entire Sect, what could we Foundation experts do? It is better that we go down fighting with you, it is a far more useful and honorable death!”

Having been bolstered by the burly cultivator’s words, the righteous cultivators felt a surge of morale as they fought valiantly against the Ethereal Hounds. The Spirit foxes have begun fading away.

“Not naive?” Yin Na snorted with disdain. While he was exchanging a series of rapid qi-charged punches with Tian Ji Han mid-air, Yin Na suddenly turned around and flew towards the ground.

“Where are you going?!” Tian Ji Han shouted. “Turning your back on me, you’re making yourself vulnerable!”

Yin Na hopped on his raging Spicy Oil Boar mount, then as he was riding it, swooped down and grabbed the burly cultivator as he was fending off dozens of Ethereal Hounds.

“How dare you! Let go of me!” the burly cultivator screamed as he was grabbed with just one hand by the neck by Yin Na. When a cultivator reaches Golden Core, his strength is magnified many times, and the burly cultivator may as well weigh as much as a straw doll in his one hand.

“Yin Na, you bastard!” Tian Ji Han’s eyes were livid with rage. “Let him go!”

In a way, Xiao Ying’s death freed Tian Ji Han, so that he was free to fight with Yin Na one-on-one. Yin Na knew this.

He also knew of Tian Ji Han’s foolish Dao of benevolence.

“Is something the matter?” Yin Na laughed. These righteous cultivators were morons. To not know of their leader’s benevolent nature was truly being naive! They were of far more hindrance to Tian Ji Han alive than dead!

Tian Ji Han struggled to find an opening to strike Yin Na, but every time he closed in for an attack, Yin Na simply blocked the openings with the burly cultivator, suspended helplessly by the neck.

Tian Ji Han tried to attack the Spicy Oil Boar mount directly, but Yin Na was able to dangle the burly cultivator like a ragdoll over the areas he targeted.

“Argh!” Tian Ji Han growled with frustration, as Yin Na fired potshots from behind his living meatshield cover.

“Tsk, tsk,” Yin Na said. “I’ve taught you ever since we were back in the Hidden Sword Sect that you’d make far more gains at a much faster rate if you’d simply abandon your stubborn ideas of ‘benevolence.’”

When he was five years old…

“Yin Na, I have a game for you.”

“Yes, father. I like games. Games are a way to practice making gains of benefits.”

“Indeed. Now, I know you always wanted a spirit pet of your own.”

Yin Na’s father took out the surprise he was hiding behind his back. It was a Spirit Budgie!

The Spirit Budgie was a pudgy, but unbearably cute white-feathered bird, with adorable beady-little eyes, and streaks of purple-blue patterns on the end of its feathers. It was a relatively common Spirit beast, but because it came from his father, Yin Na immediately cherished it.

“Thank you, father.” Yin Na cupped his hands and bowed his head.

As soon as he was about to raise his head, he felt an unbearably heavy pressure on his head.

“This Spirit Budgie had been charmed with a gravity-altering spell. It is now a hundred times heavier than its normal weight, and cannot even fly, unless I remove it.”

“...” Yin Na struggled to stand straight as the Spirit Budgie’s claws dug onto its scalp. Even though it was fluffy and smelled clean and nice, it was quite heavy, it felt like he was wearing a hat made of lead.

His father pointed at two trees with a tightrope drawn across between them. Only one of the trees had a ladder leading to its top.

“I have placed a huge sum of spirit stones and treasures on the other tree. If you can walk the tightrope to the other tree without falling down, all the loot will be yours.”

Yin Na understood the task and climbed the ladder of the first tree. A tightrope made of vine was strung on the branches of both trees. He could see the glowing pile of spirit stones on the other end of the tree.

Balancing on the tightrope was, needless to say, difficult.

The Spirit Budgie weighed heavily on its head, and now that it could not fly, it seemed to have a fear of heights as it dug its claws onto his scalp.

“It’s okay,” Yin Na said soothingly to the Spirit Budgie. “I won’t let any harm befall you!”

But before he had even taken three steps on the tightrope, he saw his father flying to the end of the other tree!

“La la la la la!” His father sang loudly as he began collecting the spirit stones one by one. “Oh my, son, if you don’t hurry, all the spirit stones will be gone!”

Yin Na’s heart began to panic.

“Damn it, this dumb Spirit Budgie is weighing me down, otherwise I’d already reach the other end of this tightrope!”

He tried to walk faster, but in his impatience, compounded by the weight of the Spirit Budgie on top of his head, he lost his balance.

The rope was ten meters up from the ground.

Yin Na was only five years old, and he was definitely going to hurt himself upon falling. Seconds before hitting the hard forest floor, he grabbed the Spirit Budgie from atop of his head and covered it with his arms and hands.

When he recovered consciousness, he saw the tall figure of his father standing beside him.

“Aiya— son, you wasted too much time,” said his father. “All the spirit stones are gone.”

Yin Na looked around. At least he still had a Spirit Pet, right?