Yu Xiang shot forward, using the enormous branches of the gigantic trees that littered the underground cavern as footholds, his two companions following closely just a step behind him.

Zheng Yin seemed completely at home in the dense subterranean forest, moving around like she’d been born on a tree. She strode forward on the shaking branches with unparalleled confidence in her steps, something that Yu himself had to use part of his movement technique to emulate, swinging around vines and pushing herself forward using her entire body in a way that vividly reminded the young reincarnator of a monkey. Though he wasn’t dumb enough to admit that to her face.

Meanwhile, Feng Liu was faring a bit worse than his two fellow disciples, having to keep a movement skill up at all times to deal with the treacherous terrain. A haze flowed all around his body which the green eyed cultivator immediately identified as some manner of wind technique, easily discernible as it continuously flung away obstructions from the young disciple’s path while letting him almost float from place to place. Liu’s steps were so light that he almost seemed to be skipping around playfully from branch to branch like a forest sprite.

In this manner, with Yu Xiang taking the front and the other two taking the rear and covering his back, the small group dove deep into the thick woods, almost immediately encountering fierce resistance from the local collection of spiritual beasts.

A skin crawling sensation went down Yu’s back as he sensed something entering the range of his spiritual perception and moving extremely fast towards them.

“Incoming from the front!” His fellow disciples reacted immediately to his warning, taking position a few strides behind him to aid him without getting in his way. The two of them were certainly strong for their age, but both of them were still just at the peak of the Natal realm, which meant that they would be immensely disadvantaged while fighting face to face against the beasts of this underground space.

The time for idle thoughts quickly came to an end as something hurled towards the young reincarnator, so fast that even to his eyes it just looked like a dark blur.

Fortunately for him, he’d had the good sense of preemptively activating his new defensive technique, which let him bleed off most of the force from the strike that he could now identify as some kind of faintly glowing chitinous blade.

Yu Xiang’s eyes followed the blade, which was as long as his forearm if not a bit longer, finding it attached with a thick joint to a heavily armored and bulbous appendage. Noticeably slower than before the bladed appendage retracted, folding itself back inside the armored limb like an old time razor, as its owner quickly jumped backward to create some distance.

The young reincarnator finally laid his eyes on his attacker, his face twisting in disgust and an exasperated sigh escaping from between his lips as he took the belligerent spiritual beast in.

More than anything else his attacker resembled a roided up praying mantis, standing a full head taller than Yu Xiang and at least twice as wide. It skittered about on far too many legs for the green eyed cultivator’s tastes, each appendage gripping the ground with three clawed fingers that gently curled on themselves. Two bulging eyes protruded from a triangular head covered in small barbs, while two sharp mandibles gnawed hungrily at the air, a greenish fluid drooling from the overgrown insect's mouth.

Its stance would’ve been almost comical if it wasn’t for the fact that it was a disgusting giant bug. Its heavy segmented arms held up in front of its dark torso and beady eyes, almost as if it was readying itself for a boxing match.

Yu Xiang took the chance to arm himself further, taking advantage of the brief period of time he’d won himself by repelling the monster’s alpha strike.

[Piercing Fulmination]

With an effort of will and a flex of his spiritual energy, two short spears made out of semi congealed lightning chi appeared in a flash in his hands, extending twice as long as his forearms and letting out menacing arcs of electricity along their surface.

Now that he was better equipped, Yu Xiang felt a lot more confident in teaching the giant bug its place on the pecking order.

The spiritual insect looked him up for a few seconds, seizing him up and reassessing his level of danger. But Yu Xiang had no intention of letting it regain its bearings, and with a movement skill enhanced leap, he rapidly closed the distance between them.

The young reincarnator raised the spear held in his left hand and stabbed forward towards the praying mantis' chest with a probing strike, but despite having taken the initiative, the monster still managed to defend itself.

It raised one of its heavily armored forearms, intercepting the blow. Lines of pulsing lighting arced wildly between the spiritual construct and the armored forearm but the beast's armor proved too strong to penetrate.

The mantis responded with its own attack in the form of a heavily telegraphed swing of its other mace like arm. Of course, such a slow strike was as easy as pie for Yu to dodge, but just as he started moving to the side of the descending attack the mantis surprised him.

Faster than his refined body could keep track of the blade hidden inside the armored limb jumped out of its sheath, moving so fast that the air whistled around it as it passed through it.

A numbing impact crashed against Yu Xiang's front, sending him flying backward so fast that he crashed through a tree behind him then left a dent in another one just behind it.

The green eyed cultivator let out a groan of discomfort as he felt his entire chest throbbing in pain. Fortunately for him, his [Snake Skin] had done its job marvelously and protected him from the worst of the attack.

Yu Xiang knew that if that blade had hit him directly, he would have had more than just a big bruise to deal with.

But while the defensive technique had more than paid back for all the time he'd spent agonizing over it, it hadn't exactly come out of the confrontation unscathed. Most of the scales on his chest sported deep fissures, some of them were even beginning to disperse back into spiritual energy, while the ones around the area of impact looked slightly bent from the ordeal.

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As much as he would've liked to mend the broken scales before returning to battle Yu was still too unfamiliar with the skill to put it back together while keeping it active and he simply didn't have the time to bring it down then up again.

Because the overgrown bug was hurtling at breakneck speed towards him.

Yu Xiang slid to the side hurriedly in a flash of golden light while the bug hit the tree he'd been thrown into with his mallet arms, absolutely obliterating it and causing a rain of splinter to fall upon the two combatants.

The green eyed cultivator summoned another spear of lightning, as his other two had dissipated after the previous attack had left him discombobulated, then threw it with all his might at the out of balance spiritual beast.

His attack struck true, hitting the praying mantis in the side, just a bit under its heavily armored shoulder where the beast's chitinous shell became a bit thinner.

The beast let out a loud and sharp chirping noise, similar to that of a cricket but scaled up a thousand times, as the lightning spear punched through the soft armor that protected its rib area and received a discharge of electricity to its naked flesh that made its muscles twitch involuntarily. All the while its puncture wound let out precious pale green lifeblood.

Yu Xiang moved the moment he'd seen his attack connect, summoning another pair of short spears into his hands and taking full advantage of the spiritual beast's momentary spasms.

With the spear held in his left hand, Yu aimed for one of its legs, wanting to limit its mobility as much as possible, piercing right through the thinner plates and maiming it into uselessness. But his strike didn't end there as his spear kept moving, wounding another two of the monster's legs.

With the spear on his right hand, the young reincarnator delivered another painful blow to the insect's side, just below where his first spear had landed, making the monster's bleeding even worse while discharging another shock to its internal system.

By this point, the human sized praying mantis had braced itself for the pain and just managed to counter attack with another swing of its hammer arms, but Yu Xiang had already predicted such an outcome and he jumped back well before the thick appendage could come anywhere close to him.

Instead of taking advantage of its crippled movement by pelting it with attacks from afar, the green eyed cultivator jumped right back towards the spiritual beast, a new pair of lightning spears in hand.

Now that he'd mostly learned the praying mantis' fighting style and destroyed its ability to move around freely, Yu Xiang finally started to duel it properly, exchanging blow after blow in a deadly waltz where any error or mistake could mean injury or death for either dancer.

Yu Xiang couldn't really get past the spiritual beast's defense even with his superior mobility due to the latter's defensive stance. It kept its heavily armored arms close to its torso and tried to move as little as possible due to its wounded legs, so that no momentary stumble could leave it open to another lucky stab.

While the praying mantis couldn't even begin to try landing a blow. As whenever it so much as twitched its bulging forearms towards the scaled cultivator he jumped away well out of its reach or skittered towards its wounded side, trying to land another debilitating hit.

This slow and methodical exchange went on for a couple of minutes as Yu Xiang tried to come up with a way to finish the wounded spiritual beast off, until in a flash of genius a plan struck him like a tribulation from the heavens.

Yu Xiang started pushing more spiritual energy into his conjured spears, making them thicker but keeping their length static. The energy inside them intensified constantly for a few seconds until it neared the critical point past which their forms would start to distort, during which Yu and the spiritual mantis went through dozens of exchanges.

Once Yu had crammed as much power into his technique as he felt was appropriate he broke the stalemate the two of them had fallen into by charging forward with abandon towards his opponent.

The spiritual beast had obviously not expected such a move, so it was caught flat footed and tried to scramble backward using its damaged legs.

Yu Xiang crossed his arm in front of his chest then uncrossed them violently aiming for the mantis' reinforced forearms.

The beast didn't understand why its opponent did so but it counter attacked anyway. Its arm blades shot out of their sheats once again, cutting right through the lighting spears and bisecting them, while they aimed for the cultivator's already damaged chest armor.

Yu Xiang smirked as his plan went off without a hitch.

The cut off sections of his lightning spears didn't disperse into the air but bulged out into imperfect spheres of wild electricity, which exploded in hundreds of arcs that rained down upon the unsuspecting bug.

Another round of uncontrollable spasms caught the spiritual insect unprepared, not having the chance to brace itself, which let the cultivator in blue twist his torso sideways and slide right past the giant insect's menacing blades.

Now just a few handspans away from the disgusting creature Yu Xiang's distaste flared even higher, but he ignored his own instincts and proceeded with his plan.

He smashed the broken spears still held into his hands together, combining them into a single longer spear, then with a sonorous war cry he delivered a life ending stab towards the beast's triangular head.

But the giant insect had no intention of dying meekly and accepting its fate. Just as the lighting lance was coming towards its head it opened its mandibles as if to take a bite out of the lightning construct and spit out a compressed stream of bright green liquid.

The potent acid hit Yu Xiang dead on, drenching his head and back in the caustic liquid, but the young cultivator simply ignored it as his [Snake Skin] proved itself once again by rendering the chemical attack completely harmless, the inherent properties of the skill making the foul liquid flow right over the reincarnator's skin.

On the other side of the coin, Yu Xiang's attack struck true, entering the overgrown insect's mouth and exiting from the back of its head, delivering another shock directly to the monster's nervous system.

But still, the wretched thing refused to die, its bladed arms twitching towards Yu Xiang's back. With a snarl, the young reincarnator tore his spear right through the top of the beast's cranium, completely obliterating its head, then with as much hostility as he could muster Yu jumped upward and planted his lance into the insect's chest through its destroyed neck in a move that would've made Vlad the Impaler shed tears of admiration.

Only then did the blasted thing finally decide to stop struggling, and Yu could finally take a breather, which was almost ruined by the foul stench emanating from the beast's corpse.

"Holy crap, Xiang!"

"As expected of brother Xiang!"

The awe filled voices of Zheng Yin and Feng Liu cut through the thick forest, and the young reincarnator watched as his two companions walked towards him with admiration on their faces.

Unfortunately for them, he didn't really care. "You could've helped me back there, you know?" He asked in a disgruntled tone.

The two cultivators looked at him with mirrored uncomprehending looks, as if the mere thought of not fighting one versus one was alien to them.

The redhead scratched the back of her head sheepishly. "Well, you didn't really look like you needed our help."

Feng Liu calmly nodded his head in agreement. "We would've merely been a distraction against such a powerful foe!"

Yu Xiang snorted derisively at their excuses, but decided he couldn't really blame them. This was simply how they had been raised after all.

Not that he wasn't going to fix their attitudes.

After the young reincarnator had caught his breath the trio kept exploring the underground forest in search of spiritual plants, fighting other beasts that crossed their path, this time as a team, with Yu's direction, until the time for them to return had finally come.

All in all, and despite some stumbles, the trip had been fruitful for everyone involved.

Yu Xiang had gotten his technique testing done, Zheng Yin and Feng Liu had gotten a taste of how beasts and cultivators in the Constitutional Realm did battle and learned some precious lessons in teamwork, and they'd all come back with their pockets filled with loot and a promise to work together again.

Time, and money, well spent, all things considered.