The Jinxi Patriarch truly thought he had the upper hand, sending such a vast amount of energy to assault Sage’s mind. The thread of will that controlled the golden cricket only then realized that it was mistaken. Upon breaching the gate of the fortress and bashing through a wall, it felt it was a moment away from finally defeating this adversary, but it realized this was only the beginning. It was not a fortress, it was a maze. When the Jinxi Patriarch was just realizing that his mental attack was not the trump card that would win him the battle, his opponent had already made a move.

In the outside world, the seedpods exhausted their fiery red seeds, which meant the thousand small crickets were no longer being interrupted. Without that interruption, he could now attack with full force, but he suddenly didn’t want to anymore.

Sage had tricked the old man, luring him into wasting so much time on mental attacks because he was even more confident in his defense against them than he was against sound based attacks. The only thing he was more confident in going up against than mental attacks would be poison! He felt he’d be at a disadvantage against an equally ranked mental cultivator, but a mere dabbler like the Jinxi Patriarch? The old man’s mental attacks would probably take a week to breach his defenses.

Before the Jinxi Patriarch was able to draw back the thousand small crickets, and the energy they carried, Sage had already leapt over the root fence. Layers of the Soundshield were bursting in front of him as he closed the distance with a high speed dash. Just as before the old man used that strange movement technique to bound into the air. An invisible air bubble moved along with the patriarch and burst apart to give the old man a powerful thrusting force in mid-air. The blade of Sage’s Golden Mantis Body was dodged once again, but the old man frowned because he realized he’d been pushed back closer to the edge of the stage. He started to rush back, but he had to leap back again to avoid a barrage of fiery seeds. The lotus blossoms on the root fence had still been purple during this time and when he tried to make a move they shed their petals and turned red, launching hundreds of burning projectiles at him. His flash of insight proved correct. Sage was already pushing the root fence forward and more Sacred Banyans were sprouting up to further crowd the stage.

The trees continued to spread their aerial roots down to the ground, twining them together until they formed new tree trunks. The Jinxi Patriarch withdrew the thousand small crickets to recover their energy, and regretted the loss of that thread of will along with that huge amount of energy he’d sent to assault his challenger’s mind. That challenger on the other hand, didn’t press the attack, letting the old man recover his attack while he limited the battlefield even more. His actions didn’t truly trap the old man, but the cloudy white mist and pink gas ensured that if the Jinxi Patriarch let the banyan trees cover the whole stage it would become Sage’s home ground.

The patriarch’s movement technique could hold the Paradise Nightmare mist at bay, but it hadn’t stopped the Killer Garden. Sage hypothesized that the root lance was able to pierce the protective bubble around the old man, and then when it was emitted from the root it had a second chance to affect the old man up close. The trees continued to spread and the new ones bent over to form another fence by combining the limbs of their canopy and their roots. They wove together to make an even stronger wall than the last one and succeeded in limiting the patriarch to an even smaller area than before. The quarter of the stage had been sectioned off into another four portions with the Jinxi Patriarch now trapped upon 1/16th of the entire stage. Thoughts of jumping over the fence were foiled by the fact that the tree canopy was a hundred feet in the air. If he couldn’t take the trees down he would be constantly attacked from both above and below if he went into that forested area.

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“You have surprised me. I never would have thought that—”

The Jinxi Patriarch had started to speak but was interrupted by Sage rushing towards him with another slash of his golden blade. The old man had been sending mental attacks his way, intending to knock him unconscious so his sound attacks could rip his body apart. If the intensity of the pressure waves hadn’t been so high, then there could still be an argument made that the patriarch was just going to knock him out, but that wasn’t the case. Those sound blasts could have torn any normal person clean in half, Sage had only been saved by his Soundshield and tough beast body. With such an enmity already established between them, why would Sage show any mercy? If he won the challenge and the old man was still alive, that would just be leaving something to cause trouble for him in the future. Since the Jinxi Patriarch was the only one that could defeat the Great Elder Xie, then all Sage had to do was take him out to put the Xie in charge.

Since the old man had to die, why would he bother to waste time talking to him?

Sage dashed back and forth, using his powerful muscles to propel him at high speeds. The Human Seal could lock living things into a human body, taking things that didn’t fit the human form. Of course, it also wasn’t perfect. It was only as powerful as the crux the seal master who placed it could grasp. By weakening the effect of the seal, he was able to take advantage of the features of his powerful beast body while still maintaining the appearance of a human. That said, the more power he released, the more obviously inhuman he started to become. Right now, to get greater strength, his legs had already formed extra joints and had changed to a chitinous exoskeleton instead of flesh and bone. He was able to get away with anyone noticing because his trousers and shoes concealed his legs quite perfectly.

While Sage was darting from right to left, swinging his blade, the Jinxi Patriarch kept leaping into the air and then darting at a diagonal angle back down to the ground. He shot himself downwards to reduce his hang time in the air so he could leap up once again. The old man had already tried to do the opposite, ascending higher to buy some breathing room, but the newly grown Banyan trees had already flooded the area with cold air. The blue lotuses dropped the ambient temperature of the area to below freezing, and when the patriarch shot into the air, they rapidly changed color and launched burning seeds at him. The limitations of his marvelous movement technique were shown as the air bubble could only be popped once.

So he can do an eight way air dash, but no triple jump.

Without being able to change directions multiple times in mid-air the Jinxi Patriarch used a loud chirp to fight off the projectiles with pressure waves. Sage was impressed by the old man’s shrewdness when he saw the patriarch carefully observing the recovery time of those lotus flowers. Once the seed pods released all their projectiles, then new blue flower buds had to bloom all over again. Yet, even if the old man saw the weakness of the lotuses' recovery time, it didn’t help him since Sage had already planned for that eventuality. The lotus flowers didn’t constantly attack the Jinxi Patriarch, they only attacked when he jumped to a high altitude. Since the flowers were mostly high up in the tree canopy that gave them greater accuracy and also created a ‘ceiling’ for the old man.

Seeing their Clan Leader so penned in and weathering a rain of attacks, the lower ranking members of the clan in the crowd had all risen to their feet. They were too excited to stay seated any longer. How had things changed so rapidly!