[Status
Name: Xiang Moxie
Level: 0 (56)
Rank: None (Nascent Soul)
Affection Rating: Incapable of Feeling
Description: After sacrificing a fourth of her soul to launch a Sound Calamity Attack and being reduced to an enslaved Nascent Soul, she is in a quasi-death state; incapable of thought or emotion.
Sex: Female
Strength: 0
Endurance: 0
Speed: 0
Defense: 0
Intelligence: 0
Luck: 10
Nascent Qi: 0]
“Hmm…” Elizabeth would sooner squint a hole into the Moxie’s Nascent Soul before she thoroughly destroyed it.
With the flip of her left hand, an hourglass appeared at the base of her palm, and with the flick of her right hand, the subdued Nascent Soul was sent into the hourglass.
[Status
Name: Temporal Hourglass of Souls
Spirit Grade: A-Ranked Core Artifact (S-Ranked Nascent Artifact after sealing the Nascent Soul of a Level 56 entity.)
Description: Created by a smith at the upper levels of Saint Ranked Forging, this container-type Artifact was built with the express purpose to contain Nascent Souls. By being forged with Temporal Inscriptions of Stagnation and a Tier 1 Enhancement of Volume, several Nascent Souls may be stored for centuries without signs of waning.
Effect: Nascent Souls sealed within this artifact degrade ten times slower than they would normally.
Tier 1 Enhancement of Volume: Up to 10 Nascent Souls at the threshold to breaking past the Spirit Realm can be safely sealed within this artifact.]
Naturally, after her ascension in cultivation at the Sky Seizing Castle, Elizabeth not only upgraded her previously lacking equipment, she also created several new Armaments and Artifacts that would be useful going forward with her level of strength. In her Spatial Ring, she had no less than five Temporal Hourglasses of Souls.
She never expected the need to use a Temporal Hourglass so quickly and she probably wouldn’t have even brought it out, if not for the matters that needed her immediate attention. With the battle against Moxie over, there was still the battered city a hundred kilometers below.
In the blink of an eye, Elizabeth returned from the edge of space to just a couple hundred meters above the planet’s surface.
Despite her energy reserves nearing extreme levels of fatigue from having to sustain so many Skills throughout her fight, she still managed to spread out her Core Sense for nearly a hundred square kilometers; far beyond the most devastated area of the city.
Though it mildly burned her soul to conduct the massive city-wide scan with her Core Sense, especially after having been hit by the Sound Calamity attack, Elizabeth did so anyway before converting the neutral energy in her Core Qi to Life Core Qi and revitalizing the majority of those injured.
‘Vital Pulse!’ Elizabeth internally chanted as a phantom acupoint array of Life Qi manifesting both on her body as well as on the bodies of all the bystanders that were critically injured as collateral from her fight.
[Skills:
Name: Acupoint Art: Vital Pulse
Level 63
Experience: 15,000,000/15,368,348
Spirit Grade: A
Energy Cost: 50 Core Qi per minute minimum to take effect on Cultivators in the Core Stages
Description: Self-created by the user, Vital Pulse makes use of the Life Profound Truth of Vitality and the Acupoint Profound Truth of Pulse to maximize the recovery of targets’ lifeforce and stamina. By replicating a phantom acupoint array on the bodies of the user’s targets, the user’s potent Life Core Qi can both rejuvenate and stimulate the target’s acupoints to make use of their Acupoint Skill.
Primary Effect: Creates a phantom acupoint array capable of maximizing the degree of recovery of the intended targets. Maximally functional on Core Stage Cultivators and below, yet still capable of 75% effectiveness on Nascent Stage Cultivators.
Secondary Effect: As the user’s Understanding of Life and Acupoint increases, the potency of Energy and complexity of Acupoint Arrays proportionally increases; increasing the number of high-level individuals the Skill may affect by proxy. Currently, the max efficiency of the Skill works on up to five Core Stage Cultivators at the same time.
Tertiary Effect: The lower the Cultivation Base of intended targets, the faster the rate of recovery. For every Stage of Cultivation lower than the user, targets require less energy to recover and recover faster by a factor of ten.]
Luckily, despite several months passing since Earth was changed by the Dimensional Upgrade, the majority of people, especially in the larger cities, were Mortal Stage Practitioners and Non-practitioners. There were hardly any Spirit Realm Cultivators aside from those in Elizabeth’s party nearby site of the battle against Moxie, and those there were present didn’t suffer nearly enough damage for Elizabeth to even consider helping; they could brace the impacts of the battle’s shockwaves by themselves.
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That aside, Miami still had a population in the millions and with Elizabeth’s lacking energy reserves, she struggled to manage helping everyone hurt.
‘Damn, these people are fragile,’ she thought, quite annoyed with the weakness that she saw through her Core Sense.
Without her help, hundreds of thousands of people might have suffered fatal, if not life-crippling injuries, and it displeased her to think this was the result of them simply being hit by that first shockwave; before Jane managed to raise what was now a Spirit Grade Mid-Tier Defensive Array.
Still, what little conscience she possessed felt relieved as she sighed and thought, ‘At least, none of them died because of me…’
She didn’t so much care for the lives that would have been lost as she did care that they might have been lost because of her.
Suddenly, the arrival of several dozen relatively high-Level Spirit Realm Cultivators caught Elizabeth’s attention.
“Hmm,” Elizabeth stared at Kurt’s form upon noticing the unstable aura around him and completely ignored the looks of everyone else.
“W-where did the s-source of the spike in Nascent Qi go?” An anxious Foundation Collapse Stage Cultivator asked. Not half a year ago, he would have been acting as a judge during the Martial Tournament, but now his fear of an unseen Nascent Stage enemy left him a stuttering mess; hopelessly incapable of making an impact.
“I already took care of it,” Elizabeth said as she summoned the partially full Temporal Hourglass of Souls and stimulated it to prove it housed Nascent energies.
“Anyway,” she ignored the senselessness she had inflicted on the army of Cultivators, continuing, “it’s great that you both came over here on your own accord.”
With a tired sigh, she muttered, “Saves me the trouble of having to call you over or, heaven forbid, having to make yet another half-planetary trip.”
Though the majority of the Cultivators on Kurt’s side were left even more confused by her words, Elizabeth’s message was understood by those she was referring to.
“This is ridiculous,” a clearly panic-stricken Cultivator from Kurt’s group nervously said. He continued, “Even if by some miracle the girl managed to subdue a Nascent Cultivator, the army of Core and Foundation Stage invaders that no doubt followed, would have left the city a mess before she could handle them as well.”
With a sigh, too tired to slowly explain and calm everyone down, Elizabeth said, “Look, fighting took quite the toll on my body so could you just take my word for it and retire? Check over the city as a group if you want, but I’m going to need your bigshot to come with me.”
The knowing and smug expression Elizabeth manifested as she referred to Kurt sent a panic through the Cultivator army.
“B-bigshot?! Who do you think you’re talking to?” A Transcendent Foundation Stage Cultivator yelled.
Before Elizabeth could do more than raise a brow in amusement, Kurt said, “Relax. For hundreds of kilometers in all directions there isn’t so much as a Foundation level threat. Do as she said and survey the area to gather as many details about the exchange while I go talk to her and we can decide where to go after regrouping.”
Though a majority of the Cultivator army was disgruntled to see Kurt react so passively, his word was law to them. Quickly enough, only Elizabeth, her parents, and the remaining party that returned from the Shadow Realm were the only ones standing in the center of the city’s skies.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” Kurt depressingly said.
“I do!” Elizabeth uncharacteristically asked, filled with bipolar emotions.
“Did you just now plan to fight off a Nascent level alien right after breaking through?” Both worried and angered half to death, Elizabeth scoffed as she said, “Forget a Nascent Cultivator, even I could collapse your ‘Nascent Soul’ in my current state.”
“Is… is it really that bad?” Kurt asked, “Though I don’t know much about medicine, I formed my Nascent Soul after consolidating my Refined Core for months.”
“It’s not about the quality of your Nascent Soul, it's the fact that you acted without thinking.” Elizabeth said, “It would be dangerous for anyone to enter a serious battle without consolidating their Nascent Soul after its formation. Not just you, but anyone could die to the slightest soul attack.”
“Ellie,” Maria hesitantly called, “don’t blame your father. It’s not like he had a choice. How could we have expected you to grow strong enough to defeat a Nascent Cultivator so quickly? Or even that you would be able to return from that other dimension in time…”
“Hmm,” Elizabeth groaned, accepting the fact that her mother had a point.
“Anyway, to summarize what happened here today, my group and I were ambushed the moment we got back from the Shadow Realm. The Nascent Cultivator turned out to be another Chosen of the Cataclysm, not an Opal Devil from the interdimensional portals,” Elizabeth said.
“Wait, wh- How did they know where you would be the moment you returned from the Shadow Realm? And how did you manage to beat someone with at least a three-stage difference in Cultivation when they too possess a Goldfinger?” Kurt asked, somehow feeling an even deeper level of apprehension after learning that his assumption of Elizabeth’s growth was beyond under exaggeration.
“I too would like to know how she knew where I would be…” Elizabeth muttered, not sure if it was to Kurt or herself before she regained focus and continued, “As for how I beat her, it honestly came down to being both a much more versatile and more prepared Cultivator. For every trick my enemy had, I had two or more. While she only excelled with regard to the soul and energy, I was well rounded and stronger physically. I even had more resources… More I could sacrifice to win in the end…”