The situation seemed to be at a stalemate for onlookers. The six elders would attack Punya turn by turn and Punya would defend these attacks. For Punya, there was no moment to rest as one sword attack would push him backward and he would miraculously reach another elder of the Thapa clan.
It wasn’t that Punya hadn’t tried to change the direction mid-flight but no matter which direction he changed to there would always be an elder ready with a sword in their hand. The elder would attack him and send him flying to the center where two elders were positioned and they attacked him turn by turn sending him backwards. If Punya had chosen to take on the attack, he would probably have survived with few injuries. Still, the situation would be dire afterward because killing only one of them would not change the outcome by a significant margin.
Punya had figured out the pattern of this battle formation. Five cultivators with earth attribute cultivation techniques were needed. One was situated in the center acting as a pivot point to send Punya back to the four cardinal directions where the remaining cultivators sent him back to the center. So if there were only five cultivators in the formation, it was possible to escape if Punya could kill one of the elders or cripple them but since there were six of them, injuring one wouldn’t make much of a difference.
With enough practice, it was possible for the cultivators in the cardinal direction to change position with the one at center in a short time which meant that the enemy would have to have five times more qi than the cultivators in the formation. It was truly a battle of endurance of one against five. And the cultivators in the formation get to toss you back and forth like a football. Although the formation seemed simple at a glance, executing it was much harder. It required years of practice so the Thapa clan would introduce the formation to the clan members as soon as they broke through the foundation building realm.
They could train the clan members when they were in the qi sensing realm but it would only waste their time as battle formations were complex and it wouldn’t create much effect when used by the cultivators at the qi sensing realm. And as a secret technique of the clan, they couldn’t teach it to just anybody, right? So they usually teach the battle formation to those who have reached the foundation building realm and showed a promise of reaching at least the middle stage. Otherwise, it would just be a waste of the clan’s resources.
The six elders were clearly trained in the battle formation for decades as they executed every move flawlessly. Even with a great sense of battle flow, Punya hadn’t quite figured out how to get out of this predicament. He simulated different plans in his mind but every one of them ended with a stalemate at best. Even if he could draw this battle till dawn, there was probably no one free enough to come to his rescue. If there was a slight interference in the formation from the outside, Punya was confident enough to break it in a single move but looking at the current situation, it seemed highly unlikely.
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He was defending the strikes from the elders and although it looked easy, every second was tense for him. If he was not a battle cultivator with extraordinary instincts, then these attacks wouldn’t just end with close encounters. There were many instances where he was almost injured. But as the battle kept on going, he gradually got the hang of the pattern and it became somewhat easier. This was the terror of battle cultivators.
It didn’t matter if the environment was unfamiliar or even if they were at a disadvantage, if they could survive long enough, they automatically adapted to the flow. Many other cultivators with extraordinary comprehension could also do that but for battle cultivators, it came naturally. Punya could to some extent predict which direction he was going to be pushed into and who the cultivator in that direction was.
He was trying to find the weakest link and eliminate him with minimal injury. Even if the situation doesn’t change much, this was the only viable option for the recent future because he saw the battle between Kumari and three cultivators which seemed to be on the stalemate. So there was no one coming to save him. The elders were dressed in the same black dresses and even if he had seen their faces, he didn’t recognize any one of them. But from the battle, he knew who the weakest among them was and who he could break easily.
The stalemate continued and Punya kept getting bounced back and forth. Although he didn’t have to expend too much qi to defend the attacks because of the martial technique, he knew he couldn’t outlast six of them. So when he was getting bounced back to the east direction, he suddenly used his sword technique imbued with the first move of the spirit halberd technique in which he could create feint and use all his power into one attack. Like usual, the elder slashed at him with the black swan returns, and Punya this time used the first attack to just clash with the slash in which he had used a lot of qi.
This time he wasn’t pushed back and the elder was surprised. The other elders didn’t have a chance to intervene and when Punya slashed the sword from his right, the elder hurriedly raised his sword in defense. This was a feint attack with no power. When the swords clashed, Punya used the momentum to use another attack. Punya used the momentum from the slash and rotated. His sword slashed the elder from his right.
If this attack landed, then his upper and lower body would separate. This attack was also stopped by the elder who was barely able to react but when the swords clashed he felt something was wrong. This attack was also a feint as Punya was just gathering momentum for his next attack. After two attacks, he had gathered enough momentum and with a ‘swoosh’ sound the sword in a blinding speed moved from the elder’s right hip to the left ribcage severing his body into two.
The remaining elders were rushing towards Punya to help the elder out of his predicament but the battle with that elder lasted barely more than two seconds. The elders rushing towards him stopped mid-way. The formation was broken and one of their elders had his entrails falling out of the sky. His two body parts were falling towards the ground with his inner organs scattering in the air. Although he was the weakest among the six, his death was anticlimactic. He died without using his trump cards or even using his techniques to their full extent.