Yu Xiang flexed his aura, spreading his spiritual senses through the darkness of the night as far as he could push it and adding a speck of his Intent with his still shaky control, bringing his aura to life in ways pure manipulation simply couldn’t replicate.
His unmistakable, personal presence, suffused through his aura, dimming and becoming hazy, harder for anyone he didn’t want to notice and in turn, use to find him, even with his extremely unsubtle blanketing of the area.
It still left the young reincarnator in awe, just how all encompassingly versatile Intent truly was, even with just his amateurish grasp of the force things that would’ve normally taken him months and months of focused practice, if not years, became as easy as turning his hand.
His techniques had never been so refined, his control over his spiritual energy so skillful, and he was even getting closer and closer to a breakthrough in his cultivation with every day that passed.
If that was all he had to worry about then he would’ve been overjoyed by his mounting gains, but unfortunately, he couldn’t simply focus on nothing but his personal growth and ignore everything else.
Because as ready and willing to use as his power had become, the same couldn’t be said for his stocky, hopefully soon to be, friend.
When the red clad swordsman had decided to send them out in pairs Yu already knew he would be spending some time with the apprentice blacksmith, but contrary to what Chun Dai might have expected or wanted he decided not to resume with his camaraderie building attempts just yet.
A pretty big bomb had been dropped on his head just a few hours ago, and it would be a darn shame to make Su Rong suspicious by pushing him right now just because he’d grown impatient.
So Yu Xiang decided to fall back on something he’d had years of practice in, thanks to his oldest companion.
Keeping his mouth shut.
Su Rong seemed to have had the same idea as he silently brooded to himself while keeping a look out with his own aura, although his presence extended a fair bit short of his own.
But that was okay, considering how far away from the inner parts of this hidden space they still were and how devoid of spiritual beasts their path had been so far, the green eyed cultivator didn’t expect to find anything out of the ordinary during their time as sentries.
Seeming to have pried the cursed words out of his skull and taken offense to them, the universe promptly decided to prove him wrong.
Something disturbed Yu Xiang’s spiritual senses, moving stealthily through the grass, the snug clumps of trees, and the enormous rock formations, all the while giving the young reincarnator a weirdly weak signal that he couldn’t completely decipher even with his enhanced aura and that he was sure he wouldn’t have been able to pick up without the liberal use of his Intent.
It seemed that the green eyed cultivator didn’t even need to open his mouth to jinx himself.
Yu Xiang gestured wildly at the nearby Su Rong, quietly lamenting his decision to leave his carved slab of stone turned altar back at the sect’s compound.
“What is it?” The gruff young man said with a displeased expression, clearly not finding the interruption of his quiet brooding time pleasant.
Yu didn’t beat around the bush, meeting the other inner disciple's irritated gaze with his own placid stare. “I sensed something moving around relatively close to our position.” He said in a conspiratory whisper.
Su Rong’s irritation rapidly vanished as he registered his words, his glare vanishing as his face set into a steely and focused expression.
With a half nod and a whispered. “Where?” The normally irritable young man putting on his game face now that there was something potentially dangerous in the vicinity, immediately ceded ‘leadership’ of their two men unit to him.
Which was smart since he was the one who could sense whatever had been moving around the hidden space. It just surprised him slightly to see the fiery cultivator acting so level headed after the explosive end of their now months old bout.
But well, people really can change, Yu Xiang guessed.
Suddenly his secret mission didn’t seem so impossible to complete.
On that hopeful thought, Yu Xiang moved out, guiding Su Rong towards their still moving target, taking a wide path circumnavigating its position to make sure whatever was crawling its way towards their camp would not see them coming.
While they carefully jogged towards their mark the young reincarnator made sure to keep his enhanced aura over the spiritual beast at all times.
Yu Xiang was sure that the crawling beast had not missed the presence hanging above it, but as long as it could not follow the essence of the aura back to its source he would be able to keep it guessing at its real position.
It didn’t take the two of them long to wrap all the way around their mark to approach it from the rear, and once they felt they were close enough they used one of the many teeth like rock formations jutting from beneath the grassy soil to get the high ground, which briefly brought a smile to Yu’s face, and finally get a proper look at their foolish and unware prey.
The darkness of the fake night was too thick for their normal, if spiritually refined, eyesight to pierce through, so they channeled spiritual energy into their eyes to boost their vision, laying down upon the pointed rock to use it as a makeshift cover in case their mark sensed the build up of energy.
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Yu Xiang even added a spark of his Intent to the mix, just because he couldn’t hold himself back from playing with his shiny new toy.
Instantly the world lit up, making the green eyed cultivator blink in surprise at the sudden influx of light. The world hadn’t quite become as bright and colorful as it was during the day, but as they were now there was pretty much nothing that could hide from his eyes without some working of spiritual energy.
It didn’t take long for Yu Xiang to finally find his prey, but as his eyes landed on what he’d been following all the way here a sense of deep hatred seeped from his pores.
Why?!
Why is it always some blasted insects?!
Standing on two rows of four dark spindly legs, a dark bulbous spider prowled forward through the tall grass.
Reaching somewhere around the green eyed cultivator's knee in height, the affront to god, humanity, and all that was good and just under the heavens more than made up for its relatively small height with its fat wide body, walking forward in twitching bursts as its engorged mandibles ground against one another grossly in a display that vaguely reminded Yu Xiang of a mosquito rubbing its 'hands'.
Its bulbous and thickly armored abdomen was covered in dark criss crossing lines, standing out against its brown exoskeleton thanks to Yu Xiang's newly obtained night vision, something he would've gladly gone without if he had known what his poor eyes were going to be subjected to.
Or maybe not. Better the godless abomination from hell you can see, than the one crawling outside of your line of sight.
The cherry on this cake with way too many legs was that every inch of the spider's body was covered in thick brown hairs, waving gently in wind, or rather they would be if there was any wind in the first place, which meant that the spider was moving those on its body on its own!
Ugh.
Oh yeah, and there were three of them. As if a single one of those demons spawned from the deepest nightmares of man weren't already one too many.
Seriously, why couldn't insects, arachnids, or whatever other of those disgusting griblies keep their legs to a reasonable amount?
No more than four, just as god, the heavens, Santa Claus, and the Sand Man had decreed ages upon ages ago at the beginning of reality, where time and space had been born from the primordial chaos.
Any more than that was asking to be labeled as a heretic existence to be exterminated with impunity.
Something the young reincarnator was more than willing to do.
Yu Xiang caught one of Su Rong's shoulders with his hand, getting his immediate attention before he pointed at the crawling bugs with his other outstretched hand.
As his fiery companion finally saw the forms of their foes his face tightened, his body no doubts filling to the brim with zealous and completely reasonable amounts of murderous hatred.
They looked at their unaware prey scuttling around for a few more seconds before they made their move, jumping from their vantage point above them with a chi enhance leap into the open air.
As the two cultivators ascended towards the night sky, Yu Xiang brought his spiritual energy to bear, shaping and congealing it into the semi corporeal form of a lightning spear, the loud crackling of electricity brought into nonexistence by another spark of Intent infused into the technique by the young reincarnator.
Meanwhile, Su Rong's fists were enveloped in twin shrowds of pale red fire, crackling merrily, but still quiet enough that it couldn't be heard all the way from the ground.
Then they started descending.
The two inner disciples fell down like the fists of an angry god on the unprepared overgrown arachnids. Su Rong landed squarely on his target with a bone crushing force, arriving at his destination slightly before Yu Xiang due to his heavier build. His targeted spider fell flat to the ground, its carapace cracking audibly as its legs curled wildly in pain.
Su Rong jumped back from his opponent, dodging a spear like leg that had been aiming for his chest.
Then Yu reached his own target and he stopped paying attention to his fellow cultivator.
The slight delay between their two attacks had narrowly saved the giant spider as instead of hitting it dead center in its abdomen Yu's spear merely cleaved through its two back legs on its left side.
A screeching, clicking sound that made the green eyed cultivator crawl tore its way out from between the spider's dripping mandibles, clearly showing the beast's anger and probably insulting Yu's parents to boot. As if its mere existence wasn't already enough of a reason to make sure it wouldn't survive the night.
Now that he was so close though, Yu Xiang could finally figure out what was so weird about the things' auras.
They were in the Constitutional Realm, just like the other members of his team, barring the lone core disciple, but the flow of their spiritual energy felt erratic and wild, which reminded the spear wielding cultivator of his own, of extremely brief, time spent as a half step into the realm.
With that little tidbit of information filed away for later, Yu Xiang resumed his attack, spearing viciously at the beast's many legs to try and cripple it.
Unfortunately, even as a mere half step, the thing's physique was strong enough to keep up with his onslaught enough to not die immediately, and even try to hit back a couple of times.
Of course, Yu Xiang found such a situation unacceptable, promptly activating his [Golden Path] and kicking things up a notch, after which the already half crippled spider got more and more desperate until it gambled its life on a single all out attack.
An extremely sharp chitinous leg rocketed towards the young reincarnator's head, glistening slightly in what he immediately identified as some type of poison judging from the miasmic essence coming off of it.
Yu Xiang wasn't worried though. The silence of the night was suddenly pierced by a crack of thunder as the spear wielding young man took hold of the Intent already residing in his technique and shifted its purpose.
Silence morphed into power and the crackling construct pierced through the spider's leg then into its mouth, existing in a splash of gore from the back of its bulging abdomen, right under the spinneret.
With a flick of his wrist, the toasted corpse fell from his chosen weapon in a boneless heap.
Yu's eyes darted to his teammate first, but seeing as Su Rong was dealing with his own abomination without too many problems the young reincarnator focused instead on the last unharmed spider, ready to rectify that little detail.
While its brethren had been busy fighting for their worthless lives, the other spider had wisely if cowardly decided to keep running forward in hope of escaping while the two it left behind gave their life to buy it time.
Yu Xiang snorted derisively.
The fact that it was running towards their camp, and certain death, was beside the point as the green eyed spearman had no intention of letting it get that far.
It was going to die by his hand.
Yu Xiang reached back with his right hand, his crackling spear held firmly in his grasp, then with an explosive exhalation of air and a movement so fast that the air around his arm whistled for a moment he sent his [Piercing Fulmination] flying towards the running beast.
The air parted in front of the construct, its flash alerting the cowardly spider of its imminent demise.
The eight legged monster tried futilely to jump away from the flying thunderbolt's trajectory but to no avail. The technique was simply way too fast.
The carapaced beast let out a piercing cry of either terror or defiance, ultimately worthless as it was cut short by Yu Xiang's overcharged skill and blown into fried smithereens.
The young reincarnator turned back towards his companion ready for more but was disappointed as he caught Su Rong landing the final blow on his own squirming opponent, reduced to little more than burnt to charcoal, slightly twitching carcass.
Oh, well. Might as well get back to camp to relay their findings to Chun Dai.