The end of the whip snapped towards Six Grains' back and the sand-like material abruptly flowed upwards to intercept it, but it acted too late. The Infernal Qi infused Tigerbriar raked across the man’s back, tearing the man’s robe and ripping up his skin. The robes he was wearing were powerful Magical Tools and not just normal clothing, but it showed not just the power infused into the attack, but also the superior quality of an actual Artifact in comparison. The large claw-like thorns of the whip tore up Six Grains’ back, but a whip was not the best weapon for penetration or cutting power. Up against a Nascent Soul, the best it could do from one strike was to cause terrible surface damage.

The defenses like flowing sand caught the whip and knocked it aside, stopping it from curling and wrapping around Six Grains’ body. The crack of the whip was not the real way it did its damage, the true danger was having it wrap around a target and then slowly tightening, cutting in with ever increasing pressure. The cracking attacks were only meant to harass and as a method to get it into close proximity with rapid speed. It would be even better if he could lure an enemy into grabbing hold of it and trying to tear it out of his hands.

There was also another purpose to this move, one which became apparent after Six Grains had knocked aside the end of the whip and pushed away the mid-section of it with a large wave of sand. The whip continued to strike from two different directions while the flowing sand-like shield rotated and swirled around Six Grains to intercept each of the attacks with ease. The man used the rice grains like a huge cape, sweeping it around his body over and over again. It made it very easy to defend his whole body, but moving so drastically was using up far more energy than earlier.

The swirling grains moved faster and faster, not just sweeping aside his attacks but starting to aggressively attack it. Sage didn’t let up on the attack, maintaining the furious attacks with the overcharged Tigerbriar, filling the air around the man with Infernal Qi. After a few minutes of furious attack there was a crack and the whip was severed in the middle, a few dozen feet of its breaking off and falling down out of the air. Sage pulled back the rest of it into his armored sleeve, still slowly circling around Six Grains and watching the man’s now furious face. As soon as Sage had injured him, the man had brought out a healing pill which just finished its work healing all of his injuries, but there was other damage that the pill had no way to counteract. The injury as well as the constant attack were only to help the Infernal Qi seep into Six Grains, slowly making him lose his cool and release his dark side.

Sage’s attacks had been somewhat reserved, relying upon just a flurry of simple whip attacks to keep Six Grains on guard. That was because he was devoting the majority of his Qi to the Infernal Banyan down below that had now spread over the Spire like an umbrella, its writhing tentacles covering half the Spire and blocking those inside from escaping out of the upper half. The rank fives used their strange dragon headed hose Magical Tool to constantly attack the Infernal Banyan, which Sage directed to attack certain parts of the Spire at random. Once they attacked it for a while it pulled back and another part of it attacked the barrier. This made them feel like they were holding it back from wearing down the defensive barrier, but all that Sage really wanted was to buy time so it could expand further.

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Now that the first half of his plan was complete, Sage enacted the next part of the plan. He triggered the Blacksilver Pawn deep down under the ground and the other Infernal Banyan network sprang into action. Huge tentacles sprung up from the river water all around the Spire. They rose up into the air, growing longer and taller as they wrapped around the building’s defensive formations. These huge main tentacles rose up a quarter of the height of the building before they reached their limit. They intertwined with each other, locking together to form a circle around the defensive formation. Then more tentacles sprung forth from them, covering the gaps between the first huge tentacles and also climbing upwards as they grew and connected like a lattice.

Six Grains saw that his opponent had put some more distance between them and stopped attacking. Despite the Infernal Qi infecting him, he was still able to keep most of his rationale and he looked down to see what was going on. He started to float back down to rejoin the defenses, but that was when Sage jumped back into combat. Tigerbriar shot out of his armor again, but this time it wasn’t wielded like a whip. The vine extended into the air like a snake, swirling around to avoid a few blobs of rice that were thrown out as projectiles. It focused on extending its length to get in front of Six Grains’ path and then started to spiral coiling into a crude wall. Then it suddenly grew a dozen giant draconic heads, their faces looking shredded by blades, flesh hanging by small shreds and covered in blood. These horrific creations cried out in agony, sending a deep chill through the air. The rice had formed into a few tentacles of its own, but they started to freeze in mid-air, many small grains losing power and dropping down from the sky.

Six Grains stopped his rapid descent, realizing these strange looking heads weren’t just gross looking as he felt the cold building. He used his huge cloud to protect himself just in time for the flayed dragon heads to open their mouths and release a gout of flames towards him. The flames battered Six Grains weapons, but he realized the burning flames were very deceptive. It wasn’t a single burst of extremely high temperature, nor was it a slow roasting. The flames covered a huge area, but they were mostly quite weak. There were actually a few hidden attacks within the shower of flame, burning projectiles that slammed against his defenses and tore a chunk of them away. These attacks were hidden by the rest of the flame making them extremely difficult to defend against.

This attack was the Winter Lotus technique infused with Infernal Qi. The strange heads released waves of cold as they gathered all the heat energy in the area, and then breathed fire as a smokescreen to cover the attacks of the seed pods which contained all that gathered heat energy. These waves of attacks couldn’t last for long, but they covered a wide area. The Tigerbriar grew and covered a huge area simply so it could attack Six Grains from every direction, forcing the man into an all encompassing defense so he had to stop moving. These attacks couldn’t last for long as they relied upon the heat gathering phase to condense the seed pods, but they didn’t need to. They just had to buy him enough time for the two Infernal Banyan networks to meet up. They also surprised Six Grains as they were boosted by a different law than the previous attacks. This put the man off guard and made him more cautious which gave Sage all the time he needed for this second phase of the plan to be completed.

Down below, the lower Infernal Banyan finally met up with the upper one, the disgusting writhing and bloody tentacles intertwined, linking together and connecting the weakening upper portion with the vast reserve of energy down beneath the ground.

The seed pods started to run out, and Six Grains saw his chance, breaking out of the flaming encirclement by forming his rice weapon into a huge needle around himself. The giant lance shot out of the flames and smashed into the tentacles wrapped around the Spire. He passed through the Defensive Formation like it wasn’t even there and a loud roar of elation rang out down below when the people saw their protector return with just a few rips on his robes.