Even if they had to pretend to battle, they had to keep their act up. They had to make it believable until there were some major changes on the battlefield. If all three of them could survive till the dawn, then there would be hope for their clan. As for the aftermath as long as all the members of the Rijal clan died then there was no need to worry about anything.
The big tree the Thapa clan would shoulder the pressure from above and they just had to pretend to obey them and send resources to the clan every year. After all, this was what they had agreed upon previously before attacking the Rijal clan. The two clans were to send resources to the Thapa clan from the Bareback mountains and in return they would get protection and few resources not available in third-tier cities.
Even if they sent more resources to the Thapa clan, with the Rijal clan out of the picture, they would be able to get more resources than what they were getting at present. And by giving the resources as a tribute to the Thapa clan, they would get protection and if lucky may be able to get a glimpse of the golden core formation realm. Even if not in this generation, getting one golden core formation realm cultivator in a later generation would secure their clan’s future for the next ten generations. The three allies then started to play the long game.
One would attack from one side to distract Kumari forcing her into using her cauldron to defend and another would attack from another side. At that moment, Liu Ming would attack with his soul technique distracting her. Kumari knew they were just stalling but she was helpless in this regard. Although she was strong enough to kill one of them or even three of them at once if she used her trump card, the real battle was just beginning and she wanted to be ready for any unexpected changes.
She was also keeping an eye on her son and grandson. Although she knew Punya was strong enough to battle with those Thapa clan cultivators and he even had a trump card to make this battle easier, she couldn’t help but look over from time to time. As for Amrit, she didn’t know the full extent of his battle prowess but seeing his battle till now she knew he was capable of holding against everyone on the ground. Except for the old fogies of the two clans and the Thapa clan cultivators, Amrit was able to fight one on one with any cultivators below.
The stalemate continued and Kumari just played along with the three cultivators. Keshab was still in stand-off and hadn’t made a move. The golden core formation realm cultivator was also in the air without attacking so there was something else in the play she wasn’t aware of. Still, it didn’t matter if the other side had trump cards as the Rijal clan had few of their own. The battle continued for a few minutes with Liu Ming accumulating more injuries from the backlashes and the duo from the Visigoth clan were also emptying their aura reserves.
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Although they could recover aura faster and even recover from damage on their body, there was still a limit and with the crimson-hued flame clinging to their aura, they had to spend a lot of effort and aura to extinguish it. Meanwhile, Kumari was taking it easy. After a while, she seemed to grasp a certain pattern to their attacks and could counter them perfectly. Even after using a lot of moves, she wasn’t short of breath. It seemed like she was just watching the kids training with her. And it was all because of the cauldron.
The grade of the cauldron was unknown but it was at least at the peak of the second tier and since it had a failed seed of beast fire embedded into it while forging, she could spew almost an unlimited amount of flames from it as long as she could provide enough qi. And due to her alchemy, the failed beast fire seed was imbued with the crimson-hued flame making it extra dangerous. If she didn’t want this stalemate to continue, this battle would have already concluded with at least one casualty from the three cultivators.
She was not just playing along; she was also testing out the limit of her crimson-hued flame. She had wanted to do this previously but there was no strong body path cultivator in the clan and she didn’t want to use her grandson as a guinea pig for her purpose. If it was Radha, she would have stormed off to the Visigoth clan the moment she felt like testing the limit but Kumari couldn’t do that. Gradually testing on them, Kumari found that the flame armor not only blocked the physical attacks but also blocked most of the soul attacks.
It was more effective than the flame walls for stopping soul attacks because the scales on the armor were more concentrated and were almost solidified. The good thing about the scaled armor was that even if they were broken, with a little bit of qi, the cauldron would spit more flames and she could mold them into scales to mend the broken parts of the armor. This was like an infinite defense hack as long as every bit of the armor was not broken at once.
It wasn’t that no attack would pass through her armor but even the shockwaves from the impact or the vibrations would be significantly less when they reached her body. So as long as the attack was not too strong to break the armor at once, she could maintain this state for a long time. If she had the recovery speed of Amrit, she would be able to maintain this state for as long as she wanted.
The trio tried everything in their book to distract her and land an attack but they always failed somehow. There was one time when Liu Ming almost got through her defense and attacked her consciousness but luckily she was able to ward off that attack with a little backlash on her soul. The routine was getting boring so she decided to finish this charade.
She instantly increased the amount on her qi and started playing offensively. She first poured a lot of qi into the cauldron and warded off Alaric with a huge amount of crimson-hued flame. As for Frideric, she used her full-powered punch and successfully broke his hand which tried to block her attack. She was aiming for his ribs but he was able to put his hand before them.
As for Liu Ming, he was a bit far away but she had already created a spear with her flames. The spear took only two seconds to solidify.