The sudden ferocity of his attacks caused the Jinxi Patriarch’s features to tighten. There was finally a shred of doubt in his heart. Sage felt a surge of greater Law energy from his foe and knew that he was finally ready to bring out his strongest techniques.
The old man was many millenia old and fighting an orphan who was barely older than a century had been a joke in his eyes. He was using this challenge as an excuse to show off how powerful he was by displaying the techniques of the Jinxi Faction to reinforce that they weren’t just in charge because of their excellent diplomatic and management skills. It was only at this moment that he finally realized that he had severely underestimated his opponent.
It was also the exact moment that Sage was waiting for. The instant when the old man released more Qi to interact with the laws of the world. The power of laws did not come from within, it was a force that existed outside them. After gaining an understanding of a law, a cultivator could use their own Qi to resonate with the law energy of the world and bring it under their control. The greater the understanding, the greater the law energy they could manipulate.
At that moment the Jinxi Patriarch was reaching for more power, Sage was already ready to strike. He had already seen exactly how the old man would react with his Foresight and he kicked hard to propel himself forward. This time, unlike the others, there was no boom from the stage being shattered. He used Cosmic Traction to apply his force to an empty area of space to conceal his motion, a plan that bought him a fraction of a second more time before the old man noticed his attack. Just as the old man noticed him approaching, many wooden points burst out of the stone stage in a semi-circle behind him. They shot out of the ground from 20 yards away, just outside the range his Spiritual Sense had covered. The roots grew so fast they were like thrown spears, and just as the roots shot out, the sky was suddenly filled with burning seeds. The red lotus seed pods attacked indiscriminately, completely filling the air above the patriarch with burning projectiles to keep the old man grounded.
Inwardly, the old man was cursing. The brat had blocked off his back, so he couldn’t even leap off the stage to forfeit, and filled the sky with random attacks. He knew that it was all so that he’d have to face him head on. Did this kid think that just because he was skilled at the Golden Mantis Body that this old man was afraid of him?
Contrary to what had happened so far, the Jinxi Patriarch didn’t avoid the branch head this time. There was a vicious look on his face as the old man leaned forward and then shot forwards towards the golden eyed man rushing straight towards him. His mouth opened and another cricket chirping sound filled the arena. Then the old man shimmered and his outline blurred. What had been one patriarch suddenly became dozens. Tens of Jinxi Patriarch’s rushed towards the Lang branch head with steely eyed determination. The branch head raised a hand and the blade disappeared from it, then a torrent of orange flames burst outwards and blanketed the small army of old men. The patriarch’s twisted their lips and the chirping sound altered slightly. Before the flames reached them, it was deflected by an invisible barrier, and those with shred eyes could see the flames weren’t impacting a static shield, but they were instead being pushed back in rhythmic waves.
Unperturbed by the torrent of flames, the many copies of the patriarch closed the distance with Sage and altered their speeds to create a semi-circle formation aimed to surround and trap him. It was too bad that Sage already knew exactly which one of these clones to attack. With Foresight, he could plan an attack and then see it fail long before he ever actually made a move. The old man approached him confidently and Sage already saw what gave him such confidence.
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This fellow had ruled the Chong Clan for thousands of years. There was no way he didn’t have a similar technique to the one used by the Lang Clan. Why would they give any weapons to their subordinates without having a good way to counteract them? A golden aura appeared around the Jinxi Patriarch’s hands and feet. It was a much easier to use version of the Golden Mantis Body. Instead of covering the whole body with armor, it only focused on the hands and feet. The hands and feet had many more Qi pores than the other part of the body which made it far easier to use them to form techniques. By limiting the golden aura to the hands and feet it could be learned tens of times faster than the full Golden Mantis Body. It was inferior in that it only covered a small portion of the body, but the golden aura technique’s strength came from how well it could transform the Qi. So what if the Lang Clan could cover their whole body with armor if that armor was like paper to them. The Jinxi only had to punch a hole through a few Lang members' bodies to keep the rest in line.
Contrary to his expectations, the branch head’s crossed arms swung towards the old man’s true body, the two of them moving in a backhand motion to create a scissor-like cut. Just like his earlier techniques, these clones were illusions. An illusion that targeted the external senses rather than the internal ones. Most illusions were merely unusual mental attacks. They confused the sensory signals sent to the brain to change what a person could see, smell, hear, or feel. This illusion was similar in the confusion it caused, but it wasn’t a mental attack, it was actually something more like holograms with sound. Holograms that even Sage’s Spiritual Sense couldn’t distinguish between. Their energy fluctuations were all exactly the same, and that strange air bubble movement technique blocked Sage from sensing any temperature or air fluctuations.
The Jinxi Patriarch felt the yard-long blades coming towards him, but even if the clones hadn’t seemed to work he wasn’t flustered. His body lowered down, ducking under the horizontal slashes coming his way and kicking hard at the ground with a foot covered by a golden aura. He shot underneath the energy scissors, aiming at the branch head’s now exposed side. The golden aura around his feet had magnified his strength and the aura around his hand made his fingers into claws. Those energy claws struck towards the branch head’s midsection, pointing his fingers and aiming to stab into the kid’s body like a knife to puncture his liver.
With his two arms already spread wide from the missed attack it looked like Sage was helpless, but that’s when he opened his own mouth and a massive burst of air shot from him with booming force. The Jinxi Patriarch’s air bubble shield burst, but it happened before Sage’s Stormbreath hit it. The old man instantly reversed his momentum and shot backwards to avoid the air cannon attack. He twisted and rolled to the side to avoid the pressure wave, but then he felt a hard force strike against his chest and then a sudden sharp pain from his back. Before he knew what happened, he saw a blood covered spear emerge from his stomach. He wanted to pull it out, but his body wasn’t responding properly. That’s when he noticed the pink gas emitting from that spear and realized his whole body had turned numb.
Just as the Jinxi Patriarch’s Nascent Soul flew out of his dying body, a brilliant white flame fell upon him. Sage combined his Divine Breath technique with the First Light and attacked the Nascent Soul before it could get its bearings. Then he leapt forward and one of his golden blades turned a purple color. Sage stabbed the purple blade into the Nascent Soul and it squealed in pain. The sound was the dying scream of an insect, and the patriarch’s final attack. Blood dripped from Sage’s ears, but the Nascent Soul dissipated completely.
The clan leader was dead.